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Sensors and communication electronics will ease the motorist’s life, improve the utilisation of road capacity and reduce emission levels in the coming decades. But all in its own time. Replacing technology is a gradual, evolutionary process.
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TNO describes the possible development of intelligent cars in the twenty-first century based as a gradual, evolutionary process but with irreversible transitions with respect to the role of the driver and ICT component.
The question is how the Netherlands can effectively respond. Sensors may offer a solution. A car equipped with intelligent sensors and communication electronics can support or take over many driver tasks so that drivers can use their ‘jammed’ time more usefully.
This safe, pleasant and useful way of moving from place to place is not a question of centuries. Intelligent sensors and communication electronics are rapidly becoming cheaper, enabling a paradigm shift. In the twentieth century the car had no contact with its environment. All communication signals were one way: to the eyes and ears of the driver. This century will see the car communicating with its environment. The ultimate goal is an automatic car that is able to reach its destination autonomously while taking account of other cars on the road and the roadside furniture.
Such an intelligent car will not be introduced to the market just like that. The development of the mobile form of Ambient Intelligence is a gradual process. Researchers will be challenged in the coming decades to produce ever smaller and lighter automotive electronics that are not only cheap but moreover extremely reliable. It will take 5 technological generations before we will have reliable autonomous driving. In years that means 25. And TNO is doing its best to bring that quarter of a century that bit closer.
