Your connected vehicle is arriving
January 3, 2012
In-car Internet (credit: BMW)
Over the next 10 years automobiles will rapidly become “connected vehicles” that access, consume, and create information and share it with drivers, passengers, public infrastructure, and machines including other cars.
Continued evolution in sensors, computing power, machine learning, and big-data analytics will bring us closer to the goals of zero accidents and real-time traffic management.
Cars that are aware of their own location and the location of other vehicles will “self organize”: they will talk to one another and to the infrastructure to optimize traffic flow, minimize congestion, reduce pollution, and increase general mobility. Imagine a future in which even a 90-year-old person can remain mobile over long distances in a car that drives itself.
Comments (2)
by melajara
@silicaroach. Reacting to what you said, I can’t resist the opportunity to quote myself about this same discussion/reactions raised 1.5 years ago on
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-self-driving-car-unveiled-germany.html
“I think people here don’t get the main point besides security advantages. This point is CAR SHARING.
” (melajara, Oct 13 2010)
Imagine you want to go from A to B. Say millions of other people around you want to go from A’ to B’, C to D, B to A … etc. Now let all these people communicate (e.g. via smartphone) their desires to a central service, if possible in a reasonable time ahead before scheduled transportation. Now the service can optimize the placement of its cars ressource in order to minimize either the fuel needed (environment) or the amount of cars per area or the average travel time or a combination of whatever relevant parameters (e.g. traffic congestion). This becomes a classical operations research problem perfectly addressable by a network of communicating cars.
I’m quite sure this is the future of ground transportation, at least before the advent of “legged” cars
by silicaroach
Read the comments on the original article. The thought of this on personal vehicles is ridiculous. Simply not required. Interestingly, nobody mentioned the obvious application, mass transport and delivery vehicles. Buses, trollies, subways, trains, and trucking, are all platforms for which this is perfect.