The Hindu Business Line : Drive into the future

Today, Auto Expos in different parts of the world encapsule the stupendous industrial transformation that the automobile signifies. Industrial design has been one of the great art forms of our times and cars, the very acme of industrial design.

The internationally celebrated automobile inventor Paul Mac-Cready beckons that we take control of technology, — "storm the bridge of the Titanic" — to produce energy-efficient intelligent vehicles.

The first American car to be exported was a steam carriage built by Olds and shipped to Mumbai in 1893.

The Oldses, the Daimlers and the Benzes, among the pioneers of the horseless carriage and other designers of the steam car and the internal combustion engine, would not even have dreamt of the radical changes to come. Even when the first Model T rolled out of Ford Motors in 1908, the world could not yet look beyond the hand-cranked temperamental vehicles of the pre-World War I era.

Today, however, vehicles come equipped with everything from night vision to Internet access, to radar, which help regulate the distances between cars. These are the first steps towards the "smart car".

Night vision, adopted from military equipment, uses an infra-red camera to help drivers see things far beyond the headlight glow. It projects an image of the road ahead on a small patch of windshield above the wipers. Other cars, animals and pedestrians are visible from the heat they emit.

Autopilot enables the driver to lean back and relax. Voice control lets drivers verbally instruct the car to control the radio, telephone and internal temperature. A holographic image projection system allows those in the rear to watch TV, play video games, run computer programs or watch DVD films.

Telematics technology links the car through an onboard cell-phone to a 24x7 service centre, where operators know exactly where the car is with the help of global positioning equipment.

In the event of an accident, or the car breaking down, help can be summoned from an operator.

If the airbags are not triggered in the lead-up to a crash, the system automatically sends a distress signal. Web on wheels uses a cellular phone link to dial into the server. One can then verbally request weather, news, sports, traffic or email, which a computerised voice will read to the driver.

At the Detroit motor show in 2000, the pride of place on Ford's stand went to a very plain, cube-shaped car called the 24:7. The dashboard had a computer screen, and the driver was meant to log on to "his" or "her" car. It was wired, weird and typical of the times. Electronic circuits determine the optimum fuel/air mixture, ignition sequence, and valve timing on a modern engine. Electronic devices also decide within microseconds of a crash how to inflate the airbags. Modern cars have about 80 such electronic control units, in effect tiny computers. The use of telematics takes all this a giant step forward.

The safety and security devices include traffic reports and route-mapping via satellite navigation displays, and automatic connection to emergency services in the event of an accident. Another application is the transmission of technical information from computers, which makes it possible to diagnose faults remotely. Telematics devices now being installed in luxury models tell the driver when he or she strays sideways or gets too close to another vehicle.

Some cars now have a form of cruise control that stops the vehicle from colliding with another. Fiat has even demonstrated a "driverless" car that can spot and steer round obstacles on a test track.

Driven with vision

Tomorrow's cars will be driven with vision. And with infra-red night vision at that. Electronics will constitute the very heart of the machine.

Electronics will further change the vehicle in a myriad ways. General Motors installed an infra-red camera in its Cadillac Deville which scanned the road ahead for heat signals of the human body and projected the images on to a " head-up" display on the windscreen, a utility familiar to fighter pilots.

GM used "nomad", the on-board computer, for locating phone number without the need for the driver to take his hands off the steering wheel.

Nomad could send and receive electronic mail, enquire about weather conditions, find a hotel, programme the CD player or run a diagnostic check of the car's engine systems. The BMW 7501L was an intelligent car because it could detect little obstacles around it, for instance, a child in the path while reversing.

Japan leads in seeking to reform traffic systems, cutting out traffic jams and improving road safety.

By 2010, Japanese drivers will no longer have to steer when travelling along expressways. Magnetic nails or electronic markers will be installed under expressways at 50 or 100-metre intervals. The time taken between nails, which will communicate with receivers in the cars, will determine the speed of each vehicle and regulate the space between it and the car in front. The cars will be controlled by a microwave or fibre-optic system.

Europe spends over 500 billion euros on transport annually; there are over 120 million cars in use in Europe.

Traffic jams cause losses to the tune of 150 billion euros annually. European auto players plan to use transport telematics, a fusion of transport and telecom technologies to achieve " sustainable mobility". The advance vehicle safety systems, as part of the telematics project, include multi-directional collision avoidance, preventing impacts with objects in front, behind, or on either side.

The delays caused by traffic conditions are estimated to cost the US $100 billion a year. There is thus a role for technology that aims to help drivers avoid jams and negotiate traffic.

German carmaker BMW's new model offers built-in electronics.

Christened Trafficmaster, the navigator available is a simple, useful example of `smarting' up the car.

Mercedes Benz, BMW, Fiat, Renault, Ford and GM Europe have been developing sophisticated navigation systems backed by EU support through the Prometheus R&D project.

Likewise, the HSR-VI concept car by Mitsubishi will feature automatic driving, laser radar, imaging sensors and a major communication system to pick up information from the computerised traffic control infrastructure: as the car gets to the highway, its cabin lowers, its seats recline, and the steering handle and switches react behind the instrument panel: the car chooses the optimum route to the destination.

Again, the new smart cars will no longer stop and pay tolls on expressways; instead, the account will be charged automatically; one will drive into a small gas station and fill up without leaving one's seat; a robotic attendant at an automatic pump station will use an advance vision system to locate the fuel door and then fill up. To pay, one will just slip one's credit card into a console, which will function like a bank's ATM.

(The author is former MD, ConCor.)

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