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FORD JUST TOOK ANOTHER STEP TOWARD A TRAFFIC-FREE FUTURE

FORD JUST TOOK ANOTHER STEP TOWARD A TRAFFIC-FREE FUTURE

4/7/2016, Washington Post -- Commuters, this is for you. Ford is rolling out a new, semi-autonomous feature that promises to help cope with the tedium and stress of bumper-to-bumper traffic. It's an upgrade to its adaptive cruise control technology that supports stop-and-go traffic.

Currently, many adaptive cruise control features on the market will slow you down when the car ahead applies the brakes, and it'll speed you up again when things get moving. But usually, at speeds of around 12 mph, the cruise control will deactivate and hand the driving duties back to the human.

Ford's stop-and-go adaptive cruise control, which will be available this spring on new Fusion sedans, works below that speed threshold, and will still function even when your car has come to a full stop. Using a suite of cameras and radar, the technology tracks the car ahead and matches its speed, slowing or even stopping if the situation warrants it.

If you're standing still for more than three seconds, the feature will ask you to tap a button to reactivate it, which could get annoying. Still, so long as the traffic is frequently starting and stopping, so will the car, all by itself.

Read the rest here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/05/ford-just-took-another-step-toward-a-traffic-free-future/

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Futurist Sees Self-driving Cars as Inevitable

Futurist Sees Self-driving Cars as Inevitable

Automotive News -- Self-driving cars aren't just possible. They're inevitable.

So says Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and futurist who's now director of engineering for Google.

Indeed, the days when an inexpensive computer outperforms a human at a task such as driving aren't far off, Kurzweil said in a speech last week to the SAE World Congress.

"The price, performance and capacity of information technology -- not every technology -- follows a very predictable path" of exponential, rather than linear, growth, he said. At the current pace of progress, he predicted, a $1,000 computer would be able to "emulate all the computation of the brain" by 2022.

Kurzweil said self-driving vehicles will prove their utility in the marketplace by helping to drastically reduce the number of people injured and killed in accidents, and by freeing people up to do something useful with their commute times.

Moreover, he predicted, the ownership model for cars will change once they're able to drive themselves, potentially shifting to something like the ride-hailing service Uber or the home-sharing app Airbnb, in which consumers are able to access a ride when they wish, without having to own a vehicle.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

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