flying car
self driving car
Do you remember the ‘80’s action/adventure show, Knight Rider? In the show, the car’s onboard computer, KITT drove itself. What about flying cars in the futuristic cartoon, The Jetsons and in the movies: Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones and the cult sci-fi film, Blade Runner? The future is nearer than you think. Science Fiction is becoming Science Fact.
In last week’s edition of CBS 60 Minutes and this past week’s edition of CBS Sunday Morning, there was a segment on Autonomous (self-driving) cars. The Autonomous cars were recently featured at this year’s Detroit Motor Show. Google, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus all are developing vehicles that drive themselves, as are the German companies BMW and Volvo. In conjunction with Nissan, Great Britain is planning to lead the way in autonomous cars. Nissan had the first public road test of a driverless car on a highway in Japan. Volvo has announced their plans to put 100 autonomous vehicles on public roads around Gothenburg, Sweden, by 2017. Google has announced that autonomous cars will be on the road in 2017. Tesla states theirs will be on the road by 2016.
The onboard computer for autonomous cars was developed on the same premise of schooling fish since the fish never seem to touch one another or bump into each other in crowded spaces. These same concepts are being used by sensors, lasers, microwaves, radar tracking and onboard computers. Sensors indicate if another car is in the vicinity to avoid collisions.
Safety is the top priority for autonomous cars. Zero automobile accidents and zero fatalities are the primary goals for the future.
The autonomous car will find a parking space, drive into it and park itself.
What does the average person think about this? Some people don’t like the idea of not being in control of their vehicle when it is given to a computer. (BTW: There is a manual override in the autonomous car in case you wondered.)
Personally, when I turned 17, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license. Now, at age 46 it seems that driving in Perth Amboy is like driving in an obstacle course.
The concept of a self-driving car is interesting. Will people in the future evenknow how to drive? Would they need to?
Any machine/computer can malfunction, so I feel it still will be important to know how to drive. You can’t always rely on technology to do your work for you. It has its pros and cons.
How many people do complex mathematical multiplication or division without a calculator these days? In the future, will everything be done for you by robotic machines? In Isaac Asimov’s book I Robot, menial tasks were done by robots.
What about flying cars? That would be the next logical step to relieve congestion on the roads. It would be fun to fly or fly in. Happy motoring! Or happy flying! –K.M.
The article is very interesting. Somehow, like it or not, computer driven cars seem inevitable.. and I’ll bet ultimately safer as computers don’t drink or get drowsy; at least not yet.
But if we follow technology to its logical conclusion by looking at what is already upon us, we will see that we have created a virtual reality online that is rapidly supplanting real world interaction. Now with outfits like Amazon standing ready to deliver anything you might want or need to your door within thirty minutes via a drone, we might find that the self-driving car isn’t very useful as there is no longer any need to go out at all.