Intelligent Cars + Computerized Roads - The Future of Road Travel

Imagine a future in which cars are packed nose to tail while traveling at breakneck speeds. Traffic lights and lane markings will be nonexistent, as cars speed unhesitatingly through unmarked junctions and weave from one side of the road to the other with no warning.

 

And all us human beings have to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. No pesky driving test or license required.

 

Is this all just inspired science fiction? Not so, according to scientists and engineers.

 

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of the United States predicts that by 2040, 75% of all road vehicles will be driverless. While Google’s self-driving car and other such vehicles offer us a glimpse into this kind of future, some cities, eager to turn this seemingly fantastical idea into a reality, are already conducting small-scale trials of linked-up roads. 

 

While cars moving at ridiculous speeds with less than a few feet of space between them sounds like a recipe for disaster, an intelligent road network coupled with intelligent vehicles can potentially eliminate gridlock and road accidents. In this future world, traffic flow will be governed by data. Intelligent vehicles will know where they are in relation to the vehicles around them.  No longer will we have to rely on traffic lights and our faulty human senses.

 

“In the future smart intersections may not need lights,” said IEEE’s director of the Center for Intelligent System Research, Azim Eskandarian. “These intersections will very efficiently harmonize and synchronize speeds in one direction, and then the other.”

 

This vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication will allow cars to feed information to a central command center, such as their destination, the route they plan to take, and their current position. The central command will accumulate all this data across a metropolis, allowing it to plan traffic loads and optimize volume along the roads. It will then send this information back to the vehicles, so that they know when it is safe to perform specific actions, such as entering intersections, making U-turns, or maintaining speed to minimize stop-star driving. In a way, it is more complex and extremely larger version of Los Angeles’ Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System.

 

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