Cars Get Smarter and Smarter

My first car (well, make that truck) goes up for auction next week. What's left of it anyway. A '68 Chevy pickup with a 4-speed transmission and 6-cylinder engine (which, I'm proud to say, I overhauled myself). The heater didn't heat, the radio didn't radio, and the roof leaked, but just a bit. It was your basic truck.

Which makes it a lot different from the current generation of vehicles rolling out of assembly plants. Take Volvos, for instance. As Deirdre Blake reports in Embedded 'Alert System' Helps Drivers Avoid Accidents, Volvo is implementing a "Collision Warning with Auto Brake" -- a refined warning system that makes the car brake by itself if the driver doesn’t act when a rear-end collision with a moving or stationary vehicle is imminent. A smart car, in other words.

Of course, reduced visual acuity and field of vision when driving at night are behind a lot of accidents Volvo is taking on. In Europe, in fact, 42 percent of fatal car accidents happen at night. To address this problem, researchers at the Department of Computer Architecture and Technology at the University of Granada have created an electronic system that improves driving ability at night by using information extracted automatically from night visors. In the process, project leader Eduardo Ros Vidal developed a chip that makes it easier to inform drivers by means of visual, acoustic, or other signs about the obstacles appearing in their way.

Alas it seems, my truck is more in the "obstacle" category than the "vehicular" one, seeing as it had to be towed -- not driven -- to the auction barn.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 03:38 PM  Permalink