Autonomous automobiles

Where are the cars of the 21st Century? Where are those cars that small boys in the 1960s drew? Cars with tapering bodies, F1-inspired aerodynamic floorpans, a wheel in each corner and cab-forward styling -- enthusiasts' dreams up to 20 years or more ahead of the reality.

Here we are, nearly finished the first decade of the 21st Century and we're still getting around in cars powered by reciprocating piston engines. Worse still, no robot chauffeurs...!

The car companies are trying to catch up with the market's expectations, but there are legal and technical issues standing in the way of the car that will transport you to a destination without any human intervention.

Take for example the latest BMW 7 Series, just recently released in Australia (more here). This car comes equipped with a raft of 'safety' features that take much of the driving out of the driver's hands. With its Integrated Active Steering option, the 7 Series will steer into a slide should its electronic safety nannies detect oversteer. This is in addition to the stability control system that will counteract both understeer and oversteer. There's traction control and anti-lock braking, so straight away then, the car has taken some of the more advanced driving decisions out of the hands of the driver.

Alexander Brockhoff, BMW's local Product Manager for Cars, tells us that the Active Steering correction of oversteer takes place without the driver even being aware it's happening. There's no resistance or reverse feedback through the wheel.

The BMW can also be ordered with park distance control, sideways-looking and reversing camera, lane departure warning, lane change warning, active cruise control, satellite navigation, infra-red night-vision, adaptive headlights, keyless start, electronic throttle and airbag monitoring systems. Imagine if these systems could be linked through the same in-car network. In fact, there's no need to imagine, they already are.

Keyless start detects the approach of someone with a key authorised for entry to the car. Airbag monitoring tells the car when a seat is occupied so that the car knows whether to fire an airbag for that seat in the event of an accident. It's barely a hop-skip-and-jump for airbag monitoring to report that the driver's seat is occupied and the car can start the engine automatically.

With such features as voice recognition and programmed 'favourites' in BMW's iDrive system, it's merely a matter of programming some destinations into the satnav and telling the car 'work' or 'home' to bring up the respective destination in the satnav display.

At the present, lane departure warning and lane change warning do nothing more than alert the driver to the need for course correction, but these two features, the cameras and the night-vision system could all be linked with the active cruise control, which can modulate brake and throttle to keep the car on track and guide it to its destination.

Auto rain-sensing wipers and dusk-sensing headlights work without driver intervention already -- not that the car necessarily needs them if it can process images from the infra-red camera. And it can. The latest iteration of the night-vision system can distinguish individual pedestrians and provides a forward view that betters that available to drivers relying on eyesight and conventional headlights.

BMW has even developed a system for the 7 Series that will 'read' speed limit signs. We can expect to see it here before the end of the year. There are no ADR-related obstacles to the system being introduced, it's more the case that the road signs in Australia are not uniform across the country. We asked Alexander Brockhoff whether this system could be linked to the active cruise control, allowing the car to adjust speed automatically, in accordance with the speed restrictions.

"Technically, it's possible," he said. Brockhoff felt slightly compelled to pour some cold water on the whole 'car of the future' idea, pointing out some of the technical issues standing in the way; the first such being the satellite navigation.

"With the satnav, there's always a margin of error -- of a couple of metres," he said, although he agreed that the accuracy of satellite navigation has improved markedly over the years.

For the 7 Series, another issue to overcome is the hydraulically-assisted steering. Other car companies (Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen) have developed cars that can park themselves by linking ultrasonic sensors (the park distance control sensors like those available with the BMW) to a computer which controls the electrically-assisted steering.

Without this type of power steering assistance, the 7 Series is currently at a disadvantage, but car companies are moving towards universal adoption of electrically-assisted steering systems for the gains they offer in fuel efficiency, so we reckon it's only a matter of time before the big Bimmer picks up that feature -- and the parking assist system that other car companies offer.

BMW has been working with other car companies on the 'Car-2-Car' project since 2004 (more here) and this is yet another milestone along the road to the autonomous car.

Basically linking cars by an industry standard telematics system, the BMW can avoid crashes. BMW describes the system technology as 'absolute position sensing of the vehicle based on Differential GPS and driving dynamics data' and 'data exchange between the vehicles using Cooperative Awareness Messages (CAM)'.

BMW is not alone in the development of these features. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen are also well and truly on track in the development of similar systems.

Piece by piece, we are approaching the point where the nut behind the wheel is taken out of the equation. Once the technology is sufficiently robust (unlike early satnav systems that dunked their cars and drivers in lakes) and governments of the world are convinced that legislation can accommodate the new order, car companies can actually start building cars that are lighter and more efficient -- because with 'FRED' doing the driving, there shouldn't be any more prangs.