With the arrival of smart cars and electric cars, we are beginning to get a glimpse of what the future of driving will look like. It seems that manufacturer’s priorities are shifting towards producing cars which are more environmentally friendly and easier and cheaper to run for the user.
Technology is playing an increasingly prominent role in our approach to automobile manufacturing, some of these advances are clearly visible but many of the most exciting developments are behind the scenes and under the hood. In this article we take a look at just some of the emerging technologies which look set to revolutionise the way that we perceive cars and personal transport more generally.
Lasers
Lasers underpin driverless car technology; it is by the use of lasers that cars are able to navigate roads autonomously and detect obstacles. Driverless car technology, as pioneered by Google and others, makes use of an array of omnidirectional laser beams which can determine if there are any obstacles nearby and how far away they are.
The laser technology used in driverless cars is in fact an offshoot of technology developed by NASA who have long used lasers for this purpose in various machines. The rovers which the agency put on Mars over the last decades make similar use of lasers to infer the composition of materials.
Green Technology
There are a number of ways that the automotive industry is striving to be a greener and more eco friendly industry. The benefits to this, for both individual drivers and the world at large, are numerous and with global warming becoming an increasingly urgent concern, it seems that consumers will soon be demanding to know that cars are becoming more eco friendly.
The drive towards a greener world is becoming evident in a number of fields which are intimately linked to the automotive industry. For example, Satellite, Inc offer portable, eco-friendly restrooms for various outdoor events. They also operate a fleet of trucks which are designed to allow for easy on-site maintenance. Every part of this process has been refined to make it as green as possible.
Computers
On board computers in cars were once firmly in the realm of science fiction, however over the last several years they have become an increasingly common feature and have become much more sophisticated than they once were. On board computers in cars are now capable of serving a wide range of functions, whether they are being used in driverless cars to interpret sensory input and respond accordingly, or whether they are there to augment the driving experience for a human.
Cameras
Another technology that has been around for a while but only recently begun to mature is that of automatic parking. These systems make use of lasers, cameras, and computers in order to automatically guide the vehicle in to a parking spot. While the initial versions of this concept were somewhat unreliable they can now perform the task just as well as a human.
Advances in technology are already transforming the automotive industry and this trend looks set to continue in to the foreseeable future.