Cars on Tomorrow’s Assembly Line

The so-called driverless cars -- all equipped with sensors, radars, cameras, computers and communicators that allows them to maneuver its way on roads and through traffic with very little human assistance was recently featured by CNN. These driverless vehicles still have the usual automobile parts like the Mercedes radiator. The new parts that will make the difference and constitute the new technology will be the sensors and more sensors.

These sensors will be placed on the several vital parts of the vehicle to be able to monitor the movements of the car. Many cars of today already feature many sensors for controlling various provisions in the car. Some sensors check what the car is doing when the wheels turn. Another one monitors the movements of the wheels. There are brake sensors that time the spin of each wheel and there are sensors on the airbags which will trigger the airbags if and when a dangerous impact occurs.

These sensors fitted not only to watch over the behavior of the car but also to monitor how the various systems work or react with another. The sensors are also equipped to monitor the actions and behavior of the driver as well. It studies the driving style employed by the driver like the hardness of pressing upon the gas pedal and the manner of turning the steering.

The radars are designed to monitor the outside movements. The back-up applications will be the most known and most common of these components. These are the ones that warn you if the car is getting dangerously close to colliding with other cars or even to people. There will also be the active cruise control which will enable the driver to set a maximum speed for the car and ensure maintaining safe distances from the other cars on the road.

Although most of these cruise control systems are designed on highway speed mode, Continental Tevis has actually designed a system for the Mercedes-Benz S-Class that will work to slow speed mode and even put the car to a stop. So if the traffic situation is bumper to bumper there is no need to push the brake pedal on and off, as the car will be able to stop and go on its own. This unique feature of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class will lessen usual crashes associated with tailgating.

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class line will use infrared camera and infrared light source for better night vision. The actual road condition can be viewed in green-and-black on a monitor on the dashboard. Furthermore, these cameras will monitor if the vehicle starts to go beyond the bounds of the lane that it occupies. By sounding an alarm, the driver will be warned of this occurrence.

The information that are received by the sensors, the radar and the camera will be fed in to the computer which will in turn calculate and assess the proper action that the car should make when it faces certain conditions. The computer will also function as a memory device which stores the information it has received so that in the event that a collision or a crash occurs, investigators can easily determine what went wrong. In some cars, the computers will actually manipulate and control the actions of the other parts of the vehicle to prevent accidents further.

Another of these devices is the Global Positioning System (GPS) or the telematic system, which enables the driver to communicate with other people and even to computers especially when the need arises. This system will use the satellites to be able to know and ascertain the exact location of a car. Studies are still going on for the advancement to give this system the capacity to communicate directly with one another.

The overall benefit of this new technology on cars is of course lessening road accidents and taking care of the passengers in cars. These driverless automobiles hold the promise of higher speeds and lower fuel consumption. The future will tell. And for now we have enough fuel for thought!