FutureWire - futurism and emerging technology

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Cars of the Future: Safe and Smart

The online version of Fortune magazine features a look at cars of the future, with a focus on safety features (exernal airbags, collision warning systems, eye monitoring for drowsiness, blind spot and lane drift alerts) and convenience (self-parking, "smart" GPS systems). Conspicuously absent, however, is any discussion of automated driving (gridded highways that would control the car automatically, for example), innovations to increase mileage and performance, or environmental technologies.

UPDATE: EE Times has posted an interesting, fairly technical piece about self-navigating vehicles, which can provide services ranging from collision avoidance to full-blown self-driving.