the working room

Future Technology: Cars
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

I love to read and keep track of the types of technology that will affect the future.

Self-Driving Cars

The Department of Defense (DARPA) had this awesome contest, where cars drive themselves. Think of those sci-fi movies like Total Recall with the robot driver.

The facts of this race described in the following (text comes entirely from NewScientistTech):

A sports utility vehicle with a mind of its own was declared the winner of DARPA's urban robot car race on Sunday. It travelled autonomously through traffic for six hours and 60 miles (100 kilometres) around a ghost town in California, US, to scoop the prize.

Nicknamed Boss, the vehicle developed at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, won a $2 million prize in the third such race sponsored by the US Department of Defense, which wants military supply vehicles to one day drive themselves.

See for yourself: brightcove clip.

Future Car Contest

Another contest is for a car that would be light years ahead of what's on the road today. This snippet from EV World explains what it is:

The Automotive X Prize is a multi-million dollar international competition to develop a manufacturable passenger vehicle with fuel economy equivalent to least 100 mpg (2.3 liters/100 km).

Not as exciting as the self-driving automobile, but still interesting none-the-less. I like the concept of a plug-in car or something easier to charge at home that has a driving range of 100 miles. I would never need to stop by the gas station again.

Labels: automotive x prize, cars, darpa, department of defense, plug-in hybrid, technology