Ideas from and for MAKERS

From the article… 

“A study issued by the World Economic Forum projects 10 percent of vehicles in the U.S. will be driverless by 2026.” 

This may be slower than some may think, or faster, depending on your take. But I think we should keep our eye on the other tech in our cars, rather than the fact that there is not a driver behind the steering wheel. Think of the infrastructure that will need to be present to maintain a reliable network connection between your vehicle and the connected pathways you decide to take to and from your destination. Actually, maybe you don’t decide your route after all? Who decides then? An algorithm based on the latest updates from Waze? GoogleMaps? How reliable for predicting route time are these apps now? Would they be improved if similar apps had more data streams to feed on forced by regulation of automated vehicles (AV)? 

More from the article… 

“Onboard sensors are arguably the most critical enabling technology. They are vital to helping automated vehicles make sense of their environment and surroundings. Onboard processing allows vehicles to take the data inputs from sensors and act on them to guide vehicles’ operations on the road.” 

“Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications will also be coming to both human driven vehicles and highly automated vehicles in the coming years. This will allow AVs to “see” and receive data directly from other vehicles and road infrastructure beyond what their onboard sensors can perceive…” 

Undoubtedly we will start seeing pieces of the future infrastructure for AVs creeping into our next generation of “connected vehicles” and highway or city traffic control systems. 

What is your bet? What is the next new vehicle feature we will see that will end up being a basic version of a critical piece of the AV infrastructure of the future? 

And by the way, will there still be a steering wheel?