The following article is from today's NYT. I am posting it as a "for your information" item. Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century By DANNY HAKIM
Published: April 4, 2004
ETROIT, April 3 - The modern car does not have to guess your weight. It already knows.
It watches how you drive and it can pull a Trump. Skid, and before you can blink, you're fired - the car is driving for you, if only for a moment. Cars today can decide when to brake, steer and can park themselves. They can even see.
In short, the back-seat driver now lives under the hood. And it does more than just talk.
This is all technology on the road now, if not in a single country or car. But industry engineers and executives view it as the start of a trend that will play out over the next decade, in which automobiles become increasingly in touch with their surroundings and able to act autonomously.
What brings drivers to the brink of the Jetsons age?
Diminishing returns from air bags and other devices that help people survive crashes have led to a wave of new technology to help avoid accidents. Or, if an on-board microprocessor judges a collision to be inevitable, the car puts itself into a defensive crouch. Mercedes S-Class sedans will even start shutting the sunroof and lifting reclined seats if a collision is deemed likely.
This trend is made possible by the car's evolution from a mechanical device to an increasingly computerized one, in which electronic impulses replace or augment moving parts. That means microprocessors can take control of the most basic driving functions, like steering and braking.
At the same time, there is a parallel evolution in sensory technology. Most advanced safety systems are equipped with sensors that look inside the car, tracking tire rotation, brake pressure and how rapidly a driver is turning the steering wheel.
But next-generation sensors, including radar and hidden cameras, are looking outside the car, giving it the ability to open its eyes, so to speak, to its surroundings.
For instance, this year Toyota started selling its Lexus LS430 sedan with radar tucked in the grille. If the car's computer processors sense a collision is imminent, they will cinch up the seat belts, increase the driver's braking pressure and in some cases alter the suspension, moving the car closer to the ground.
On Wednesday, Nissan's Infiniti division said that it would embed a camera on the rearview mirror of its 2005 FX sport utility vehicle. It is part of a system that warns drivers if they drift from their lane, the first such system in the United States. In Japan, Honda sells a similar system that actually steers the car back into a lane if a driver does not heed a warning.
Most whiz-bang technology begins in luxury cars, where owners more easily absorb costs, but not always. For instance, the Ford Freestar minivan weighs anyone who sits in the passenger seat with a flexible plastic scale in the cushion. If a lightweight occupant like a small child is detected in the front passenger seat, the minivan will deactivate the frontal air bag so that it does not lead to an injury upon impact.
All of this increasing complexity has ramifications for quality, because automobiles have more physical parts, and now also software, that can fail.
And it is among the reasons for rising numbers of vehicle recalls. Automakers say potential safety benefits offset such concerns.
But where is all this heading - auto autopilot?
"There's a general trend towards the completely self-driving car," said Csaba Csere, an engineer and the editor of Car and Driver magazine. He said it had once been assumed that such cars would have to be guided by technologies built into roads, an unfeasibly expensive proposition.
"Now we have cars with G.P.S.," he said, referring to global positioning satellite systems. "Combine that with radar cruise control, add a lane-changing system and throw in a transponder, or cameras, and pretty soon you could have a car that self-drives itself in the middle of a bunch of conventional cars."
Many executives and researchers say they have no such end in mind. Certainly, there are headaches to ponder. Like, what will lawyers do if self-driving cars get in accidents?
"I think it would be very risky for an auto company to take its eye off of the fun of driving, but where it can lead is to having a more enjoyable driving experience and a safer one," said Larry Burns, G.M.'s research and development chief.
He drives a Cadillac XLR, a sports car that is among many new luxury vehicles equipped with "adaptive" cruise control, which can slow a car drastically if another swerves in its path. The next-generation technology, expected within one to two years, will actually stop cars in traffic.
General Motors and other companies are also developing transponders that can communicate with other cars to create on-board traffic-snarl warning systems.
"This paints a world for us in the 5- to 10-year window where we will know where everything is relative to everything else," Mr. Burns said.
Every major automaker now sells vehicles with electronic stability systems, which apply brakes to individual wheels to stabilize the car when a driver is losing control.
And BMW already offers an optional "active steering" system on its 5- and
6-series cars that can override the driver and steer out of trouble."With electric steering, you have the ability to put input into the steering without the driver having to do anything," said William Kozyra, president of Continental Teves North America, an auto supplier.
"We're talking about small amounts here, a couple degrees, which is all you need," Mr. Kozyra said.
Japanese automakers have pushed the boundaries of these technologies farthest in their home market, a society with an affinity for gadgetry. Toyota recently introduced a car that parks itself.
Toyota and Honda have also entered the android-building business. Honda's walking, waving, if-not-driving, robot, Asimo, rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in 2002.
Which raises a chicken-egg question: What comes first, the car that drives itself? Or the car-driving robot?