Preparing our Cars to Drive Themselves

Someday cars will drive themselves.

It might be awhile, but it is going to happen. Every year 'prototypes' get a bit better at it. It does not require technology stolen from technology or unproven theories. It is simply a matter of making better sensors and better algorithms.

Now there are two things that we could be doing to make this happen faster.

1) Preparing our Roads for Self Driving Cars
2) Preparing our Cars for Self Driving Cars

Option 1 probably won't happen. It would involve installing magnetic pylons into our roads so that cars could detect them better. The reason this isn't likely is simply the cost. It would involve completely replacing our road infrastructure. Besides, its looking like this won't really be necessary.

Option 2 we could start doing right now. Basically my idea is to make cars more 'visible' to one another. If a car knows the location and speed of all the cars around it, the task of not hitting them becomes a bit easier. In fact, some knowledge of where other cars are in relation to yours would be a requirement if your car would drive itself.

It would not cost too much, or be too hard, to install a line of RF transmitters and receivers along the dorsal line of new cars. For now they would not do anything other than transmit some identification information. However, when self driving cars start to roll out they could use this information to better maneuver the roads. Because there is a whole line of transmitters, and not just one, by analyzing timing differences you could determine the direction, relative speed, and distance of this other car.

If designers of self driving cars knew that 75% of cars had this installed (for example) they could take advantage of this information. Now the cars would still need conventional sensors, but this could potentially provide more reliable information that could allow the cars to travel safely at higher speeds.

This would be an investment in the future. But like all investments it might not pan out. But the cost should not be too high.

There would, however, be some 'immediate' benefits.

Once enough cars had these installed, cruise control could start taking advantage of the sensor information. Cars could relay information about their surroundings to their neighboring cars.

You could imagine a situation in which a bunch of people are driving at 50 MPH down the highway. One guy slows down to 30 MPH for some reason. If the cars are suitably close, this will send a shockwave of people slowing down backwards. This is basically how traffic can slow down even when there are no accidents or lane mergers.

Now imagine your car knew that some guy 20 cars up has just slowed down. Rather than waiting for the shockwave to hit your car, your cruise control could drop its speed maybe 10 MPH right away. This will create a gap between your car and the one in front of you. Assuming the guy who started the traffic jam eventually speeds up, this means that the heavy slowdowns could die out in front of you.

Cruise control could be set to 'keep pace.' Basically cruise control could even be useful in stop and go traffic (of course as mentioned above it could go along way towards 'eliminating' some forms of stop and go traffic).

This type of dynamic cruise control would require some effort to program, but it would be much easier than creating software that could fully drive a car (which would need to be able to identify road hazards and steer around them).

One final benefit I want to mention is accident mitigation. The system could potentially determine if you are about to slam into the guy in front of you. If it was able to this, it could automatically apply the breaks (hopefully in time to avoid the accident). Now some people might not like the idea of taking control away from the drive like this. Ok, there is another way this technology could help save lives.

If your car essentially knows it is going to be in an accident before it happens, it can start preparing the passengers for the accident. Tighten the seat belts up automatically, maybe even 'pre-deploy' the air bags. In fact being able to deploy airbags before the accident starts could allow for a 'revolution' in airbag design.

One slight concern with this general idea is that I would be worried it could mess with the radio reception of cars. On one hand there is a lot of room in the electromagnetic spectrum to use. On the other hand, passing through an I-Pass booth scrambles my radio.

Ultimately for any of this to be useful, I needs to be in more than one car. In fact it needs to be in more than a few. For it to really work I imagine the majority of the cars on the road would need this technology. That's precisely why we need to start installing it today. We might not have self driving cars for another 20 years. But if that's the case we could have a lot of cars with RF dorsal transmitters on the road by then.