Gesture control to open a door? It could be a reality soon.

We've all heard of puddle lights before, and as cars become loaded with more and more LED technology, we're seeing lights in new places. Typically, the idea of puddle lights is that they will reveal the floor next to the door so that you can avoid stepping into something like, er, a puddle. Of late, carmakers have been using these to shine logos and model names on the floor too.

Another innovation that isn't all that critical to the operation of a car is that of soft-close doors and automatic closing doors in some of the most high-end luxury cars. Land Rover has also developed automatic doors with motion sensors to help the disabled.

Still with us? You're probably wondering what puddle lights have to do with automatic doors, then. Allow us to explain as we introduce you to Ford's latest invention.

Thanks to new patent filings published by the German Patent and Trademark Office that CarBuzz discovered, we now know that Ford, using a Lincoln Aviator as an example, is working on a new invention that could make the way we interact with cars very different.

According to the filings, Ford wants to use lighting to indicate whether a door is locked or not, illuminate the floor, or activate an automatic door opening sequence. In fact, all three ideas could be combined, with a portion of the door handle potentially illuminated in red to show a locked door and changing to green when open. At the same time, a light projector under the side mirror could illuminate the area near the door, and this could be in the form of a logo or model name too.

Most fascinating of all is that the beam of light thrown from the side mirror could act as a sort of sensor, so when the driver approaches the door (with some sort of keyless entry fob), they would break the beam of light, which would relay a signal to the car that the door should unlock and automatically open. Of course, automatic door opening and closing mechanisms are insanely heavy and wouldn't be cheap to produce, especially with the addition of a phantom door handle system as detailed here, but the benefits to design and convenience are hard to ignore. Additionally, this sort of system would likely never result in injury to the individual using the door since operation would be totally hands-free. Sadly, the same cannot be said for soft-close doors in their current form.