Over recent years technology has helped to develop and improve the driving experience. Driving has also changed due to the increase in the number of vehicles on our roads and rapid changes in technology. There are a whole host of technologies that are presently in the design process or have already started to filter onto the consumer market. These advancements are changing the way we travel. In 2015 Forbes.com reported on the top 10 advanced car technologies we are likely to see by 2020. We’ve picked out some of those ideas here, plus others already in production to offer a taste of the future:
Driverless cars – Also known as autonomous cars, these use technologies such as radar, LIDAR, GPS, Odometry, and computer vision to guide the car safely through the streets. The race is on to develop these vehicles – with companies like Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla having already released, or soon to release, self-driving features that give the car some ability to drive itself. Google announced that it would be testing its prototype of a driverless car on roads in the summer of 2015 in California. While it hasn’t gone entirely smoothly (with its drivers reportedly having to intervene to stop it from crashing at least 13 times), predictions are that within the next five to ten years we will start to see driverless cars on our roads. Autonomous cars are expected to follow current driving and road guidelines but humans will still need to learn the rules of the road to be able to step in if the technology goes wrong.
Smart dashboards: We’re seeing the development of dashboards that can read out our text messages, answer calls, find maps and play music. Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto are two to watch. With most cars expected to be fully connected to the internet by 2020, this could mean your vehicle will be able to provide marketers with a powerful set of data on your habits and in-car marketing could be the thing of the future.
Brake/Driver Override Systems – The driver override system was described in the Forbes report as where the car ‘actively disregards your commands and makes its own decisions’. This might relate to sensing the condition of the road and slowing its speed, or bringing itself to a stop if you fail to apply the brakes – even if you have the accelerator floored.
Gesture control: We may soon be able to control in-car systems such as our radio or Sat Nav simply by waving our hand in the air. The BMW 7-series already has a form of this with developments underway by PSA Peugeot-Citroen.
Health Monitoring – This was also listed in the Forbes report. We wear our fit bands and health monitors to be able to record our daily movements and activity – so could these pair up with our cars in the future? The Ford Motor Company has been testing technology that uses sensors to track body temperature to tell a car if a driver is having a seizure. The idea is that the car can pull over to safety in case of a medical emergency. This may go one step further where the car could actually call emergency services for help.
Could these developments be the future of driving for us all? Will they make driving safer – or bring added distractions? We’ll soon find out…
