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Honda Crash Detection System
MImeKillEr writes "MSNBC is reporting that Honda Motor Co. unveiled an early crash-detection system for one of their vehicles. The system is unique in working even before the driver responds. A radar in the front of the car stashed behind the Honda logo detects vehicles within a range of about 300 feet ahead. It then taps the brake and tightens the seatbelt. A buzzer goes off and a light on the dash is illuminated. If the driver responds, the braking power is boosted. If the driver fails to respond, the system kicks in and brakes more while also tightening the seat belt. Unfortunately, Japanese regulations don't allow for the system to fully stop the vehicle."
I'll probably piss-off the red-bloded Americans here, but man, I can't wait to not drive my car. I want to have fully automated driving. I want to finish work on a Friday afternoon, go home, grab my stuff, go to my car and say "Miami Beach, Please!". I want to watch movies for a couple of hours or finish reading Dune, and when I wake up, I'm parked right at my favorite beach. Same thing for the reverse trip Sunday night and Monday mornings wouldn't be half as bad. Paint fuel-cells into that picture and it wouldn't even tweak the greens.
:)
CMU's robotics program has been working on automated driving systems for years. When I was there I heard one of the professors had outfitted his normal home car with about $1500 of equipment and "drove" to school and back every day mostly hands-off. All based on neural-nets and some snazzy control systems.
And that was like 6 years ago. I'm sure there's wisdom in not rushing into something like this, but I also get the feeling there will be some hard lobbying against it. Like, what happens to truckers, cabbies, UPS/Fed-Ex drivers, etc. etc.? Will the (perhaps undeserved) reputation of dangerous speed-freak truckers come home to roost?
I wonder how Detroit would feel. At first, it's a shinny new feature == more margin. But beyond that, I can't help but see cars become even more commodity. All you really end up caring about is your comfort/ammenities.. there won't be as much attention to "performance".. ahhh.. Detroit will ~love~ it, BMW won't.
You could even share these kind of cars, like the Zip cars, but instead of you going to the cars, they come to you. Or perhaps just the under-carriage comes to you and connects to your personal travel cabin. Then, you pull out of the driveway and merge into a long train of like-designed cabins-on-wheels, all virtually-linked together via 802.11z. The road/car system routes you shortest-dijkstra-path to your destination and then your car parks itself once it's dropped you off. There's traffic density that would make clog up modern highways for years, but its all flow-controlled, so you go 120MpH with only inches between cars, so your trip takes half the time.
The moving sidewalk (armchair) of the future?