Smart Cars
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Smart Cars |
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AI-related technologies designed to improve your security and driving pleasure.
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Elsewhere on the Web
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• in-car intelligence
• Intelligent Vehicle Initiative
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As we learned from the previous feature articles on this site, putting a computer chip into every standard household item recently became a trend that didn't miss the automotive industry. So, after smart homes, smart clothes and smart toys, the next logical step is to see what's going on in this field. Truly "smart" vehicles aren't quite here yet, but several exciting research projects are offering us a glimpse of what's to come in the near future. An excellent report on the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative correctly states that right now the components that make vehicles smarter are still arriving on the market as piecemeal accessories, offered either as optional equipment by new vehicle manufacturers or as specialty components by after-market suppliers. These components include route guidance systems, collision-avoidance systems and in-vehicle automation systems that will temporarily take over driving during emergencies or allow autopiloting for prolonged time periods. These individual technologies have yet to be integrated to create a fully "intelligent " vehicle that works cooperatively with the driver.
New Scientist magazine reports on IBM's research efforts in this field with their artificial passenger (AP), a system designed for making long solo journeys safer and more bearable. According to some statistics, up to 30 per cent of all traffic accidents are caused by drowsy drivers. Artificial passenger holds user's profile in a conversation planner subsystem and uses it to construct personalized dialogue via a speech generator and car speakers. Clear and quick answer to its questions indicates that the driver is alert, so the system can continue chatting, suggest another radio station or tell a joke. On the other hand, if the AP cannot "understand" the answer (voice recognizer is coupled with a camera that tracks the lip movements to enchance the reliability of spoken input), it will assume that you are too tired and try to shake you up by sounding alarms, opening windows or even spraying you with cold water. However, the sample jokes generated by the prototype are rather bad: I doubt that many drivers will appreciate constant spraying simply because they doesn't like AP's sense of humor...
Several automobile manufacturers have begun to experiment with "intelligent control" systems that share control of the car with the driver. Researchers at Nissan Cambridge Basic Research Lab extended the concept of the smart room to include smart cars. Drivers' intended action (to turn, change lanes, etc.) can be inferred by observing their control inputs (steering and acceleration) as they prepare to execute the action. Actions are modeled using methods similar to the hidden Markov modeling used in speech recognition.
A short preview of the news articles published in the on-line magazines around the world indicates how AI-related technologies can both save lives and make long tips more enjoyable. The Japanese automotive industry recently unveiled a new system to improve road safety. Intelligent Transport System is the name of the industry-wide initiative to develop built-in sensors that can read real-time information from roadside transmitters. It will alert drivers to obstructions in the road ahead, either with dashboard text displays or voice messages.
A team of University of Arizona researchers has build a system that allows 10-year-old station wagon to guide itself along a road. It uses a radar unit and a camera to sense its environment: other parts of the system are built from off-the-shelf components, including good old Pentium 200 as the main CPU. The main challenge was to develop software that integrates pre-loaded road data and information sent from the radar, camera and other sensors to drive small motors that control the car's throttle, steering and brakes.
Another group of scientists at Motorola Australia's natural-language processing laboratory recently developed a new system, codenamed Tia, that delivers information to drivers after processing voice or console touch commands. Their main goal was to produce a user-friendly driver information service that is functional, powerful and easy to use. Real-time information delivery is possible by linking Tia to CDMA and GSM mobile phone networks.
Another interesting task for the AI-related techniques is smart vehicle convoying based on visual information. Researchers at the Rochester University have focused on the task of performing smart convoying between two mobile platforms, using a monochromatic camera, a commercial frame grabber and a dual Pentium processor, all located at the trailing platform. This type of scenario could be frequently applied to military applications.
Advanced navigation and automation functions have also been researched thoroughly within the framework of the Prometheus Program (1987-1994) which brings together all of Europe's major automobile manufacturers. Peugot has a Web site describing their vision of the smart car in more detail.
Commercially available components are currently focused on applications that help drivers better navigate unfamiliar streets or find the quickest route to their destinations. Some of the market leaders in this field include TravRoute and TeleType, producers of GPS route guidance, tracking and mapping software and hardware packages.