Cars that park themselves and pick you up, courtesy of GM

The traffic is congested, the rain is pouring, and you are in your car drinking your Starbucks while reading a novel. Your eyes are not on the road and your hands are not on the wheel, yet strangely you’re driving more safely than the rest. A quick glance outside reveals a frustrated driver blaring their horn, their eyes darting around for a quicker route. You smirk and nonchalantly recline in your seat. This is the future.

 

General Motors Vice President of Global Research and Development, Alan Taub, says that by the middle of the upcoming decade, vehicles will be able to partially drive themselves. By the end of the decade, he predicts automobiles will have much more refined self-driving systems. Alan Taub explained to the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress in Orlando on Sunday that this evolution is due to increasingly sophisticated advanced active safety systems.

 

Currently, vehicles utilize GPS, sensors, radars, and portable communication devices that provide a constant stream of invaluable data to both the driver and the computer system of the automobile. By streamlining digital maps into the hardware of the vehicle, soon enough the driver will be able to focus entirely on a non-driving activity.

 

“The technologies we’re developing will provide an added convenience by partially or even completely taking over the driving duties,” Taub said. He acknowledges, however, that they are being cautious in their development.  “The primary goal, though, is safety. Future generation safety systems will eliminate the crash altogether by interceding on behalf of drivers before they’re even aware of a hazardous situation.” 

 

General Motors has already begun implementing the earliest versions of these advanced safety systems, like the lane departure warning system of the Chevrolet Equinox, the side blind-zone alert of the Cadillac Escalade, and the back-up cameras in several models. Also in development is an industry-first crash avoidance system on the 2012 GMC Terrain which uses a high-resolution windshield camera that identifies vehicle shapes and lane markings and a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications system that analyzes possible hazards.

 

One of the most futuristic developments is the EN-V urban mobility concept, which combines vehicle-to-vehicle communications and distance-sensing technologies to enable autonomous driving. The EN-V has collision avoidance, pedestrian detection, and automated parking and retrieval where the driver is dropped off, the car parks itself, and then returns to pick up the driver when they summon the vehicle via smartphone commands.

 

“In the coming years, we believe the industry will experience a dramatic leap in active safety systems, and, hopefully, a dramatic decline in injuries and fatalities on our roadways,” Taub said. “GM has made a commitment to be at the forefront of this development.”