Will a “14-year-old from Indonesia” one day be able to hack into self-driving cars? It might sound outlandish, but Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee asked on Wednesday.
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The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) is growing closer to calling for laws making automatic braking systems in cars mandatory.
At the 2013 Consumers Electronics Show (CES), Audi is showing off its autonomous driving tech, which is essentially a suite of technologies that provide drivers with assistance while behind the wheel.
Today at CES 2013, Toyota is showing its new advanced active safety research vehicle, that is designed to help the Japanese automaker make new strides with safety technology.
Lexus will be unveiling a new suite of autonomous vehicle technology at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and today the brand released a very short clip showing off a driverless Lexus LS.
Toyota will reveal an advanced active safety research vehicle at the upcoming 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
Like it or not, self-driving cars are the future of personal transportation. A diverse group of global companies ranging from Volvo to Google are feverishly developing systems to enable autonomous autos.
Motorists in the U.K. are still skeptical of autonomous cars with forty percent of drivers saying they would never even consider one according to a new survey undertaken by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM).
It might have seemed like science fiction a few years ago, but NHTSA is already preparing standards for self-driving cars.
Experts at IEEE believe that 75 percent of the cars on the road in 2040 will be autonomous, and now the state of California is well on its way to getting there.
Expert members at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology, believe that by 2040, 75 percent of cars on the road will be autonomous.
One of Volvo’s most recent projects in automotive safety, the “road train,” is finished testing and might well bring autonomous driving to life soon, the brand says.
In a major step towards autonomous driving, nine major automakers are providing vehicles equipped with the latest in vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute for a year of real world testing.
While active cruise control already exists in production vehicles, these systems use sensors and cameras to see what is coming, limiting them when it comes to knowing what is over the next hill or around the next bend. This problem is driving companies such as Mercedes-Benz to develop car-to-car communication devices.
Google is adding the Lexus RX450h to its self-driving car lineup as it looks toward testing in different environments and terrains, pushing ahead with developing its technology.
Autonomous vehicle technology may be a reality in cars by 2015, and General Motors is one of the leaders in the new technology.
It seems everyone is looking into self-driving cars these days, but it looks like Cadillac will be the first company to offer hands free driving in a production car.
The Volvo road train has already undergone successful testing on a closed course. Now, a 120-mile drive across Spain marks the first use of the technology on public roads.
Google’s self-driving car is pretty ugly with its roof-mounted unit that allows for autonomous driving, but that isn’t stopping it from getting attention from a second state senate.
To further use technology to make our roadways safer, it was reported back in February that NHTSA wished to mandate vehicle-to-vehicle communication that could help reduce about 80 percent of today’s automotive-related crashes.
While speaking at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress, David Strickland said NHTSA is currently working with automakers and other government agencies to expedite the use of vehicle-to-vehicle communication in hopes that more vehicles on the road will be equipped with the technology in the near future.
Over at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor, an ongoing study is testing the technology to help guide NHTSA’s next steps. Its focus is to find the right interface for vehicles to communicate through in order to keep them non-distracting so drivers can keep their eyes on the road.
“The next North Star is keeping the crash from ever happening in the first place,” Strickland said. “We are hard at work from a research standpoint at figuring out the systems that have promise … so that one day we may see deeper penetration in the fleet.”
[Source: Detroit Free Press]
You might have wondered what it would be like to have our vehicles drive themselves, but seeing how it could affect roadways as we know it is, well, terrifying.
One of the biggest impacts autonomous cars would have is at intersections. With driverless cars controlling themselves, the need for traffic lights and even stop signs would disappear, streamlining travel. Imagine a world where traffic constantly flowed and we would never get stuck at a traffic light simply because vehicles would communicate with one another to avoid an accident.
Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin explored this idea and with the aid of his researchers, came up with a video showcasing just this concept. “There would be an intersection manager,” Stone says, “an autonomous agent directing traffic at a much finer-grain scale than just a red light for one direction and a green light for another direction.”
Since we don’t live in a perfect world where everyone would suddenly own autonomous cars, the video depicts a mix of both driverless and driver-controlled vehicles on the roadway. The driver-controlled cars are yellow and those people would have to wait for a signal that is based on what everyone else is doing. Stone mentioned that the system could be designed with the flexibility knowing that not all driving decisions will be made by computers.
It’s an interesting thought, but as with all things technology, we can’t even imagine the utter chaos that would ensue if something broke down, never mind the countless other variables that could come into play.
Watch the video after the break.
[Source: The Atlantic Cities]