Future Ideas on Automated Transportation and Fuel Economy
We are at the beginning in a digital, artificial intelligence improvement in transportation safety, automation, and gas savings. When anticipated increases in safety materialize, even in the first stage of independent vehicle automation by self-contained sensors, cautious drivers and insurance companies will push for allowing guided vehicles in most situations.
The second stage will be when digital, interactive roadways will provide much of the information which automated cars now have to provide by visual analysis. Signals will send out Bluetooth and maybe wifi and radio signals, as well as their present visual lights. Pedestrians and bike riders will also send out such signals, possibly with their cell phones, or with separate economical devices. Cars will be able to talk to each other with Bluetooth, GPS, or wifi, or all three. Car computers or even the cell phones or GPS systems of drivers will talk to each other and follow safety protocols. These measures will dramatically increase the safety and trustworthyness of automated driving.
The interconnected cars, in smoothing out driving, will also save gas by easing the stop and go nature of present driving. Even present cars have economy settings, and government goals can be set into the programs to save gas.
These gas savings will be instituted by state and federal administrations that are both air pollution and greenhouse gas conscious. Local communities may be called on to carry out the conversion to smart local roadways and marked pedestrians and bike riders.
While it takes about 15 years to almost totally replace the car fleet with new technology, a partial adaptation can be accomplished with cell phones and present cars. Cell phones already use traffic congestion strategies in the Waze app as well as in the iPhone map’s own driving instructions. Extensions of these apps along with Bluetooth, wifi, or built in radio or radio attachments to iPhones or other brands, can get guidance from the automatic driving network, and the drivers can use them to get into step.
Each year, cars are getting more and smarter driving options, such as automatic stopping if there is an object that the car would hit if it continued. One can imagine that full sensor and automatic driving systems could be installed in new cars now, but not activated until fully tested, improved by software enhancements, and approved by necessary government entities. Such seems to be the case with Tesla cars now, but with the restriction that drivers remain alert and keep hands on the steering wheel.
There will be enormous distribution and economies of scale in manufacturing sensors. Present smart phones probably already have most of the processing power needed as well.
