Use Augmented Reality to Build Your Next Fiat Chrysler Car

Fiat Chrysler is using some Google technology to alter the way you buy a car.

MWC Bug Art At Mobile World Congress on Tuesday, Fiat Chrysler showcased a new car sales app that uses augmented reality to allow customers to modify features in a car before they buy. The platform was congenital atop Google's Project Tango, a technology that allows mobile devices to "see" what's around them using motion tracking, depth perception, and other services.

"The prototype allows car buyers to hold a device and, using the integrated sensor technology and motion tracking, area learning, and depth perception from Project Tango, view, walk around, look inside and configure a life-size virtual car," Fiat Chrysler said in a statement.

The app, developed with Accenture, would allow users to open up doors and see a "detailed interior, where changes to upholstery colors or dashboard styles can exist made with a tap on the device screen."

While the idea is just a paradigm at present, it suggests that there are opportunities for motorcar dealers to change how they sell cars. Buyers no longer have to imagine how a showroom car with a tan interior would look with black leather; they just point a device at the automobile and run across for themselves. Once they pick what they want, they can negotiate a bargain and drive off the lot.

"Nosotros believe dealers and car buyers will exist quick to encompass this enhanced style of buying a car as the new devices become readily available, taking advantage of the 360-degree mapping environment to create this unique experience," Luca Mentuccia, senior director and head of Accenture'due south Automotive do said in a argument.

Projection Tango is notwithstanding in testing, and the get-go devices outfitted with the tech won't be available until this summertime. Also at MWC, PCMag's Alex Colon tried information technology out a Barcelona art museum, where journalists were invited to point a tablet at works of fine art for more data, or follow on-screen arrows to find their way around the museum.

This commodity originally appeared on PCMag.com.