General Motors Imagines Future With Driverless Cars
In Las Vegas on January 7th, the Consumer Electronics Association opened its doors. Thousands of people will enjoy the latest innovations from the electronics world until January 10th, but among all of the amazing innovations, one stands out the most.
Engineers with General Motors Corp. are researching and developing technologies to make cars go, stop, drive like people, and even park without human control. The technology intends to replace human drivers, and some might consider that both good and ba, but we’re already part of the way there anyway.
Technology responsible for radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane-change warning devices, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping are a reality today. However, as the Associated Press reports, the most significant obstacles facing the evolution of vehicles are likely to be human rather than technical.
There is also the matter of government regulation, liability laws, privacy concerns and people’s love for cars. Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, is hopeful, however. “This is not science fiction,” he is reported as saying.
Now the question is what does society want to do with it? You’re looking at these issues of congestion, safety, energy and emissions. Technically there should be no reason why we can’t transfer to a totally different world.
GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets.
Certainly, there will be many people who won’t consider fully-automated cars a good idea, but GM would offer drivers two options. By switching between them, it will be driver that decides whether it is a human or a computer behind the wheel. On Tuesday at the CES show, GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to these future vehicles.
That’s when we’ll know more details.
Photo: © ulalume
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