5 Future Car Technologies That Truly Have a Chance T.A. Balasubramanian Consultant, Marcom Systems Here are the five future technologies that are expected to be part of vehicles soon. 1. Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication: V2V works by using wireless signals to send information back and forth between cars about their location, speed and direction. The information is then communicated to the cars around it in order to provide information on how to keep the vehicles safe distances from each other. At MIT, engineers are working on V2V algorithms that calculate information from cars to determine what the best evasive measure should be if another car started coming into its own projected path. A study put out by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2010 says that V2V has the potential to reduce 79 percent of target vehicle crashes on the road. 2. Self-driving cars: Google engineers have already tested self-driving cars on more than 200,000 miles (321,869 kilometers) of public highways and roads [source: Thrun]. Googles cars not only record images of the road, but their computerized maps view road signs, find alternative routes and see traffic lights before theyre even visible to a person. By using lasers, radars and cameras, the cars can analyze and process information about their surroundings faster than a human can. 3. Augmented Reality (AR): Think of the Terminator, or many other science fiction stories, where a robot looks at a person or an object and automatically brings up information about them and can identify who or what they are. Augmented Reality dashboards, AR for short, will function in a similar way for drivers. BMW has already implemented a windshield display in some of their vehicles which displays basic information, but theyre also developing augmented reality dashboards that will be able to identify objects in front a vehicle and tell the driver how far they are away from the object. 4. Smarter air-bags: Mercedes is experimenting with airbags that deploy from underneath the car that will help stop a vehicle before a crash. The airbags are part of the overall active safety system and deploy when sensors determine that at impact is inevitable. The bags have a friction coating that helps slow the car down and can double the stopping power of the vehicle. The bags also lift the vehicle up to eight centimeters, which counters the cars dipping motion during hard braking, improves bumper-to-bumper contact and helps prevent passengers from sliding under seat belts during a collision. 5. Energy-storing body: In Europe, a group of nine auto manufacturers are currently researching and testing body panels that can store energy and charge faster than conventional batteries of today. The body panels being tested are made of polymer fiber and carbon resin that are strong enough to be used in vehicles and pliable enough to be molded into panels. These panels could reduce a cars weight by up to 15 percent [source: Volvo]. auto.howstuffworks/under-the-hood/trends-innovations/5-future-car-technologies.htm#page=0 HowStuffWorks 5 Future Car Technologies That Truly Have a Chance auto.howstuffworks Whats in store for future cars? Read about five future car technologies that have a chance of coming to production vehicles you can drive.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 14:41:15 +0000
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