• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, August 25, 2019

Advertising is coming to both the inside and outside of self-driving vehicles.

Sony and Yamaha Motor Company have teamed to create the SC-1 Sociable Cart, an autonomous vehicle with high-resolution displays installed on the vehicle’s interior and exterior.

The vehicle, which has no windows and can carry five people, combines Yamaha Motor’s autonomous driving technology and Sony’s entertainment imaging technology.

The SC-1 can project a range of video and mixed-reality images based on current location onto displays both inside and outside the vehicle.

“This makes it possible to install high-definition displays in the area where windows would otherwise be and to use them to stream advertisements and other content to people outside the vehicle,” states the Sony announcement of the vehicle.

Sony and Yamaha intend to deploy the vehicle for entertaining diversions at venues such as golf courses, amusement parks and commercial facilities.

The in-and-out-vehicle display capabilities aim to create “an entertainment space unmatched by any traditional vehicle, aiming to provide a more enjoyable low-speed mobility value to occupants and people nearby,” according to Yamaha.

The SC-1 can sense the surrounding environment using in-focus images in all directions. Passengers can see their surroundings at night even without headlights and the vehicle can also be operated remotely by someone watching the images via the cloud.

The vehicle can capture and analyze the images from the sensors and use artificial intelligence to determine the attributes, such as age and gender, of people outside the vehicle and optimize ads to suit the demographic.

Sony says the vehicle will not be made available for sale and services using it are expected to start within a year.

There is no word on whose ads will be running inside -- or outside -- the vehicle.