FUTURE OF DRIVING: In the future, Cars may be able to talk to each other. Seriously.
Unless you're an inveterate walker or a mass-transit rider, you probably spend more time in your car each week than anywhere except your workplace and your home.
It's not always pleasant. Highway gridlock, a fruitless search for a parking space or a brush with a thundering tractor-trailer can rattle all but the most Zen drivers.
Things are about to get better. A new wave of innovation, led by carmakers and automotive-tech companies, is transforming the driving experience. Thanks largely to on-board computers, our vehicles are becoming smarter, nimbler, safer and more fun. (Human drivers, unfortunately, will remain as erratic as ever.)
Fully self-driving cars remain some years away. But new technology in the next five to 10 years will help cars park themselves, monitor the alertness of the driver and even communicate with each other to avoid collisions. Tomorrow's cars may have long-range headlights, external airbags and hydrogen fuel-cell engines
that emit only water.
Cars that collect data about you
Thanks to on-board computers that operate everything from the stereo and navigation to the brakes and accelerator, the era of "big data" is coming to the automobile.
Like their deskbound brethren, these rolling computers produce an enormous amount of data – mostly about
people's behavior behind the wheel – that can be analyzed to spot trends and fight inefficiencies. And thanks to this data, your car may soon know where you want to go before you even pull out of the driveway.
Mercedes-Benz is developing a system that over time promises to learn your schedule, tastes and even your moods. For example, it knows that you leave the house every weekday at 7:30 a.m. to take your kids to school and that you like the cabin a toasty 75 degrees. Based on GPS and satellite data, it quickly learns your preferred routes and tracks real-time traffic problems, so it can suggest detours to help you save time.
The car can even tune the radio to the Disney channel until you drop off the kids, at which time it will recommend NPR. In the afternoons, it knows you usually prefer hip-hop.
"It's almost like the car's becoming aware," says M. Bart Herring, general manager for products for Mercedes-Benz. "Because it can make really smart decisions."
Ford has developed a system for its hybrid cars that tracks where and how an owner drives each day to maximize fuel economy. That data can be used to alter how the hybrid system behaves -- when the gasoline engine comes on to generate power, and when the car runs on electricity only -- to get the most driving range. For example, if your car recognizes you're almost home, it will switch over to electric power knowing you'll soon be able to recharge the battery.
This all happens without the driver having to punch in a destination on the car's GPS. The car will simply have learned that when you get in your car at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday you are almost certainly about to take the same route you take every Tuesday at that time.
Of course, all this data about motorists' whereabouts raises concerns about privacy, especially if automakers were to sell that data to marketers. A report last month by the Government Accountability Office found that carmakers do not appear to be sharing any location data that would personally identify drivers, although the automakers' privacy practices remain confusing.
Meanwhile, many new vehicle models today have sensors connected to the pedals and steering wheel that detect exactly what you're doing with those controls, while separate sensors connected to the wheels and engine detect what the car is doing in response.
That information is stored in an event data recorder, sometimes called a "black box." It's different from a "black box" in an airliner because it doesn't record the car's position or conversations inside the passenger compartment. But it is continually recording everything the driver does with the controls.
In the event of a crash, it stops recording and preserves that last few seconds of activity. With a court order, police, attorneys and insurance companies can collect that data to see whether a driver was speeding or failed to take evasive action to avoid a wreck.
Progressive, the insurance company, has found that how you use your brakes -- specifically, whether you tend to make short, sudden stops or longer, gentle ones -- can be an excellent predictor of whether you're likely to file insurance claims.
That's why Progressive's Snapshot tool, a device that taps into your car's computer systems, monitors only your braking behavior. That's enough for the auto insurer to decide whether you deserve a break on your insurance premiums. (Hint: Gentle braking will save you money.)
So, the next time you buy a new car, remember: While you're getting to know how your new ride handles itself on the road, your car is also getting to know you.
Cars that talk to each other
For several years now, we've been hearing about a near future in which all of our digital devices communicate with each other. Your fridge notices that you're at the grocery store, for example, and sends a message to your phone saying you're out of milk. Or your oven texts you when the pot roast is done.
Now this so-called "Internet of things" is coming to the highway. As cars grow more and more computerized, they will be able to trade messages about traffic, weather and road conditions. More urgently, they can broadcast their speed and direction and warn each other about potential safety hazards, such as when a nearby vehicle is drifting into your lane.
"If I can get information from the car next to me that they're going to turn right, that would be great," explains Maarten Sierhuis, director of Nissan's research center in Silicon Valley. He imagines a day when information about almost all vehicles is stored in the cloud and accessible by all. "It would be like crowdsourcing the driving experience."
This technology is called vehicle-to-vehicle communications, or V2V for short, and it's not far off.
In the first test of its kind, almost 3,000 cars and trucks equipped with prototype V2V devices have been driving around Ann Arbor, Michigan, over the past year-and-a-half as part of a pilot program by the University of Michigan and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The devices emit a short-range safety signal 10 times per second and can detect signals from other vehicles to determine when a potential accident is imminent. Cars equipped with the devices emit beeps when they detect potential hazards such as another vehicle entering an intersection, a pedestrian, a patch of ice or even their driver speeding too fast around a curve.
Researchers are still crunching the data, so it may be too soon to say whether Ann Arbor's network of connected cars made its streets safer. But federal transportation officials are already sold on the technology, which they estimate could prevent 76% of the crashes on U.S. roads.
Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it will move forward with plans to require V2V technology on all cars and light trucks, possibly as early as 2017. The tech would come standard on all new vehicles and could easily be added to older ones as well.
"V2V crash avoidance technology has game-changing potential to significantly reduce the number of crashes, injuries and deaths on our nation's roads," says NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman. "Decades from now, it's likely we'll look back at this time period as one in which the historical arc of transportation safety considerably changed for the better."
This V2V technology would only send warnings to drivers. But future systems could automatically take over braking or steering if they sensed an imminent collision, federal officials say. Carmakers also are experimenting with other methods of warning drivers of impending dangers, such as vibrating steering wheels.
Systems that monitor the driver
We humans are flawed drivers. We sometimes get behind the wheel while sleepy or even drunk, and we're easily distracted, whether by our electronic devices or something pretty outside our window.
In the gravest circumstances, we can even have a stroke or heart attack behind the wheel.
This is why researchers, app developers and car companies are developing technology to monitor flesh-and-blood drivers and help them avoid accidents. Advanced sensors in the passenger cabin can monitor a driver's vitals such as heart rate, eye movements and brain activity to detect everything from sleepiness to a heart attack.
Nissan is experimenting with an array of technology that detects drunken driving. A sensor in the transmission shift knob can measure the level of alcohol in a driver's sweat, while the car's navigation system can sound an alarm if it detects erratic driving, such as weaving across lanes.
The University of Leicester is working on a system that aims LED lights at the driver to track their eye movements and determine if they are paying attention to the road.
But even awake and alert drivers can get distracted. Audi is testing an attention guard that uses cameras to monitor the driver's head position. If a driver looks away from the road for too long and the car's sensors see it is coming up on another vehicle, the car will sound an alarm and even slow down to prevent a collision.
"The overall objective is to keep you safe, to keep you moving," says Mohan Trivedi, director of UC San Diego's lab for intelligent and safe automobiles, who has worked with Audi on the technology. "One of the other things is a stress-free, enjoyable ride for the driver."
Then there are systems that use sensors to keep tabs on a driver's health. Ford has teamed up with health-tech companies on a glucose reader that alerts diabetic drivers when their blood-sugar level drops. Ford also has developed external sensors that can detect high pollen counts and monitor an asthmatic's breathing.
At the Nippon Medical School in Japan, researchers are testing electrocardiograph sensors in the steering wheel that can pick up early signs that a driver is having a heart attack.
It will be a few years before most of these technologies appear inside production vehicles. But third-party apps on phones and wearable devices, such as fitness bands and Google's Glass eyewear, could become commonplace much sooner.
For example, DriveSafe is a Google Glass app that uses the headset's built-in accelerometer to detect when a driver's head falls. It also employs infrared sensors to count eye blinks and can sound an alarm if it detects the driver is falling asleep.
All this monitoring technology may seem creepy to people who are sensitive to digital privacy. And the potential exists for annoying false alarms. But if it works properly it could make our cars, and highways, safer.
Source: CNN
