Five Ways Your Car Can Drive Itself, Today

[Jamez]

In the not-so-distant future, your morning commute might be a very different experience. While you'll most likely still be lined up bumper-to-bumper on the highway, you won't be stuck in traffic per se, banging your head on your car's steering wheel because the motorist in front of you won't move. Instead, you will be doing something called "platooning," a high-tech, automated version of follow the leader.

When you enter the roadway, your car will fall in line behind a drone vehicle that is in constant communication with roadway infrastructure, collecting data on road conditions, traffic updates and more. That drone will act just like the front car of a commuter train in that it will communicate with and direct your car safely to its "exit" or "stop" without any input from you. With your car essentially on autopilot, you can, say, catch up on work, read the paper or watch the "Today Show," whatever you want, without any worry of colliding with another vehicle. Upon reaching your exit, your vehicle will detach from the pack and you will pilot it to your final destination.

Much of the technology needed to do this kind of automated driving is still in development. However, we are closer to an automated George Jetson-esque driving experience than you might think. Cars that brake and steer clear of accidents and pedestrians without any help from their drivers are here now.

Talking Cars and Roadways
The most advanced of these so-called collision-avoidance technologies use sensors, cameras and transmitters in cars to "talk" to each other, with the goal of reducing collisions and traffic congestion. For example, if you're about to change lanes and a car enters your blind spot, your vehicle would know it's there and warn you. It could even take evasive action by steering or braking if a collision seems imminent.

Centralized data centers that monitor and control traffic lights can use similar technology to warn vehicles of accidents, road congestion or a speeding car that's about to run a red light. Pilot programs that use this so-called vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology are already running, but it will be years before they go mainstream due to their cost and complexity, experts say.

For this and other reasons, public safety concerns likely won't be the chief impetus for the rise of networked cars and roadways, says Thomas Broberg, Volvo Cars' senior technical adviser for safety. He thinks a consumer application that adds convenience, such as platooning, is more likely to spur widespread adoption of automated driving technology.

Controlled Cruising
So-called adaptive or intelligent cruise-control systems now being offered on luxury vehicles are a definite step toward automated driving as envisioned in the platooning scenario. These high-tech systems employ radar or lidar — which is like radar, but uses lasers — to match the speed of a vehicle directly ahead and maintain a preset distance from it. If the cruise control is set to 65 mph and the car in front slows to 50 mph, then so does your car.

The latest intelligent cruise control offered by Infiniti will slow the vehicle all the way to a stop and close the distance to the car ahead. Then, as long as you're not stationary for more than two seconds, the vehicle will start to move again when the car in front does. "That allows the driver to take some of that workload off of constantly going from brake to gas," says Bob Yakushi, director of product safety for Nissan/Infiniti.

Most luxury automakers offer intelligent cruise control, but not all of them can slow a vehicle to a stop as Infiniti's system can. What they all have in common is a hefty price tag — usually in the $2,000 range, or more if bundled with other gadgets such as navigation systems and back-up cameras. It could be at least a few years before intelligent cruise control starts appearing in more affordable vehicles.

Networking
Audi is experimenting with extending the range of intelligent cruise-control systems using Wi-Fi signals. "Radar looks at a certain limited range ahead," says Chuhee Lee, head of Audi's connected vehicles group. "But with Wi-Fi and real-time traffic data, you can look three kilometers ahead of a vehicle." This can help drivers better avoid traffic jams, icy roads and other adverse road conditions.
Discuss: Would you feel safe in a vehicle that drives itself?
These so-called networked vehicles can also guide eco-conscious drivers to higher moral ground by helping reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. By talking to each other and roadway data centers, as well as taking into account road surface conditions, temperature and the braking and acceleration required, cars can calculate routes and optimize engine output to burn the least amount of fuel. This is the focus of an Audi research project called Environmentally Friendly Navigation being conducted with the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Riverside.
A similar test by Nissan found that advanced guidance technology helped reduce travel time over a specific route in Los Angeles by 23 percent while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent. The potential for this technology is staggering.