Early 21st Century

The future

Will we see a George Jetson car that you don’t even have to park (it folds up into a briefcase that George can carry into the office)? Or how about a Batmobile that drives up vertical surfaces and offers stealth mode? We already have vehicles that park themselves, detect oncoming traffic, and warn drivers when their attention wanders. Here are three near-future trends:

Autonomous — that is, driverless — cars are already under development. Using radar, "lidar" (a detection system that works on the principle of radar, but uses light from a laser), GPS and computer vision, their systems interpret data in a way that lets them choose a navigation path. Driverless technology may prove to be safer, since it would eliminate human error from the driving equation. But many people see it as a technology that will give time back to us: freed from the burden of driving ourselves, we’ll find new opportunities to rest, relax, catch up, and interact with friends and family.

With an augmented reality technology, a display will project an image ahead of the vehicle, which lets it overlay virtual direction arrows directly on the actual streets for the driver. Perhaps gesture-controlled cars are on their way to becoming a reality, too.

Major carmakers are working with the US government to develop a standard for vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V), which enables cars to talk to each other over a local Wi-Fi network, using Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) to transmit position, trajectory, and speed data. It's already capable of alerting your car if a car in front of you slams on its brakes, or detecting whether there's an oncoming car ahead when you're about to attempt a pass on a two-lane road.

 

Whatever telematics innovation you can imagine, contact Persis to be your Infotainment, prototyping, and systems integration partner at 248-220-4373.