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Vehicles of Tomorrow?
Human Factors Guy writes "We've seen here before car manufacturers putting more and more technology into cars, but what are the cars of tomorrow going to look like? Driver monitoring through head and eye tracking (which Volvo is already
implementing), Adaptive
Cruise Control systems, maybe even pedestrian recognition systems. With
cars becoming more like semi-intelligent robots every year, what do /. readers think will and won't make it?"
Automated freeway cruising.
Honestly, the technology exists right now to automatically drive my car along a freeway. I could probably set this up today with a few thousand dollars in hardware and a lot of code. Self-driving car projects are incredibly expensive and not yet fully reliable because they try to use them in the city. This is an extremely difficult environment to deal with.
But a freeway is perfect. All you need are cameras to watch the lines on the road, radar (or more cameras) to watch for other vehicles and objects in the road, servos to actuate the car's controls and a computer to run it all. I've actually thought about designing such a system for my RV, since long trips in that thing are very taxing. I'd still have to sit in the driver's seat and keep an eye on things, but that's infinitely less stressful than the driving itself.
But this will never be a mainstream product in our society. Too many lawyers and other disinterested parties (such as insurance companies). We'll have flying cars before you can go down and buy a self-freeway-driving module.
It will have pedals.
Seriously, decades ago pedal cars, not toys, were sold widely in Spain. They could easily average 25 mph and if you didn't have to go long distances (over 10 miles) were reasonable. Problem with many people is they're lazy and they want to take all their crap all over the place with them. There was even a design in the early 60's or late 50's of the car of tomorrow in Popular Science, which carried a spare car for zipping around in away from the collosal family mover (which actually puts the Hummer to shame.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Need a ride? Walk to the closest community car and touch the handle. The door opens, seats/mirrors/radio/temperature adjusts to your preferences and away you go.
At your destination, you get out of the car. Your account is debited the appropriate fare and you... just... walk... away (and into the next car you need).
Proper starting. Automobile engines are started all wrong. Cranking, compression, fuel, and spark all start at the same time. Oil pressure comes later. As a result, half of engine wear occurs during start. Many big engines (locomotives, marine diesels, some big tractors) are started properly - oil pressure first, then a few turns with compression released to oil up the cylinders, and finally combustion starts. Wear is much reduced.
Once 42-volt electrical systems become popular, and valve control goes electrical, we may see electric booster oil pumps and valve actuators. Once you can crank the engine with compression off and oil pressure up, you need a much smaller starting motor. The starting motor and alternator can then be combined.
Here's an idea I had a couple years ago:
Put a liquid crystal display coating over the windshield that can selectively darken specific parts of it. Have a sensor outside the car facing forward that notes any super bright light sources like the sun or headlights at night. It also tracks where the face of the driver is and, if it determines a glare situation is occurring, does the geometry to find out exactly what part of the windshield is between their head and the light source and applies a tint at that one place. The person could still see that the light source was present, but it wouldn't blind them.
Try driving west in the evening as the sun is setting, and something like this starts to look pretty good.
-Better Fuel Economy
-Better sound systems
-Headlights that are bright but dont blind oncoming traffic
-Can run past 100,000 miles without major repairs
-Less rusting, even on newer cars
-And finally, the ability to work on them without the need for 3 different diagnostic machines that cost 10 grand each!
The idea is to get rid of the personal repulsion properties of the drivers.
What about implementing separation techniques (much like IFR flying) that would permit vehicles, first in specialty lanes and then later on the road at alrge, to operate safely at predetermined distances.
Together with reversible-direction lanes, we could save many of the billions of hours (how many human lifetimes is that) wasted sitting in traffic each year.
As a former commercial pilot, I disagree.
With a few exceptions, autopilots in planes are about as useful as cruise control on the highway - they alleviate a lot of mindless work but reduce your ability to ramp up quickly to the state of the vehicle if a sudden emergency should occur.
Yes there are CAT III/Autoland units, approaches and airports, but they are few, far between, and dodgy enough that there isn't a pilot who's flown one who hasn't ghosted the controls throughout.
Removing the pilot, who makes $180 in salary during your average 4 hour hop, would be INSANE considering he or she is roughly the cost of two senior flight attendants, or about 1/67th what the fuel costs for that flight.
It isn't a video game up there. You take out the humans and you're dead, my friend.
Oh, and those little commuters carry closer to 450 gallons of fuel, not 30.