Autonomous vehicles will permanently change our world over the next few decades, says Bran Ferren, one of the speakers at the TED conference in Vancouver, where Breakthrough Technology Alert editor Stephen Petranek is in attendance. You might know autonomous vehicles by the more conventional name, self-driving cars. Ferren, Stephen writes, is co-chair of what may be the greatest powerhouse of engineering minds in the United States, a company called Applied Minds. He made a lilting and beautiful connection between the miraculous ancient Roman Pantheon and modern breakthroughs. He noted that the Pantheon could not have been built 2,000 years ago without five miracles of new technology, including the creation of concrete. Ferren drew a line directly to five recent technological miracles that will allow autonomous vehicles to become reality soon: 1. Technology that allows a car to know where it is and what time it is. 2. Technology that allows a car to know where the road is and where it is going. 3. Technology that allows a car to communicate with other cars around it. 4. Special roads that can be used for early versions of autonomous vehicles, such as HOV lanes. 5. Competitors that will be forced to participate or go out of business. The upside: Tens of thousands of lives saved by not crashing into other cars, and more productivity by workers no longer stuck in traffic. At least four major auto companies, Stephen reminds us, have announced they will sell self-drive vehicles by 2020.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 12:50:52 +0000
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