CAT (car adaptive tender)
It’s a mobile phone cradle that transforms your mobile into a personal car digital assistant.
The idea comes from the need of having a companion when you’re alone in your car.
CAT makes the use of your mobile functions safe and very simple: it suffices to insert your smart phone into and, thanks to the connection by usb port, the applications of your mobile will be adapted to car trip and enhanced to give a friendly interaction even when driving.
Thanks to vocal commands, to use CAT when you’re driving is absolutely safe and extremely simple, because it avoids distracting you from the road.
Moreover, CAT stores your personal profile: it is able to recognize the person who’s using it and it could behave suitably in different circumstances. By scanning your preferences, during the trip it could suggest alternative itineraries, diversions and stops based on the actual information gathered by the mobile connection and gps fix.
The cradle is made of PE foam formed by injection moulding, a soft material that safely protects your smart phone from any accidental bump. This material will avoid that the smartphone escape from its lodging; the cradle has the average dimension of a smartphone so it can be used for several different mobile phones of this kind.
Thanks to the rear clip it is possible to fix CAT to the sun visor. From the analysis of driver’s habits, it has seen that, despite it is forbidden to use the mobile when driving, the majority of people prefer keeping the mobile phone in full sight, just for a glance. For this reason, we have concluded that the best place to place CAT, and therefore the mobile, is on the sun visor, always in sight of the driver. Furthermore, in this position the little solar panel placed on the rear of CAT is constantly exposed to the sun light and so the device can be autonomously recharged.
The front interface is extremely reduced for a safer and simpler use during the guide. One can find a loudspeaker and a microphone that allow the vocal handsfree conversation by the phone, a touch wheel for the easy choice of music to listen and a minimal display for the navigator functions.
The key messages from CAT are shown by the lighting of the mouth shaped hole (incoming/missed call, navigator alerts and so on) and simple icons onto the small display which highlights the function in use.