Germans Shouldn’t Brake at Stop Lights

A dashboard display tells you how fast to drive to avoid a red light.

What if your car told you how fast to drive to avoid a red light? Even better, what if the traffic lights talked to the cars in order to better time their light changes. According to the KickingTires article “Audi Takes on Stop Lights: A Must Read”, Audi is partnering with the government of Ingolstadt, Germany to network the traffic signals together with specially-equipped cars in order to deliver optimum light switching and assist cars through traffic lights. The initiative is being pushed as a gas-saving measure, as less stopping means less gas used. The article doesn’t go too much into the technical details of the project, however it does have some pictures of the car dashboard.

GM puts lasers on windshield

A laser outlines the edge of the road.

Squinting to see the lines on the road during fog or rain may soon one day become a thing of the past. CNN.com reports in the article titled “Futuristic windshield aims to help older drivers” that GM is currently researching a windshield that will use lasers, infrared sensors, and a camera to point out road markings, edges of the road, and even obstacles in the vehicles path.

The researchers are mainly targeting this system toward older drivers who can not see the road as clearly, but it’s easy to see this technology being useful for all drivers. And who knows, maybe the technology that helps us more easily spot road edges could one day be used to help our future automated chauffeurs spot them as well.

Cars Should Read Road Signs

Your car may soon be able to read road signs better than you can. The “Traffic Sign Recognition and Lane Departure Warning” developed by GM scans the road ahead of you at a speed of 30 frames per second and can not only read road signs but also tell when your car drifts away from the lane. Here’s a bit more technical info from the Wired.com article “All-Seeing Car Reads Road Signs For You”:

The system uses two processors and a camera — called, appropriately, the Front Camera System — mounted near the rear-view mirror. One processor identifies familiar shapes, symbols and digits on common road signs and conveys the information to the driver via a digital display in the gauge cluster. The other alerts the driver when he or she strays from the lane.

While the current system only presents information to the driver, it doesn’t seem to far-fetched to think this technology could be used to alert an autonomously-driven car to changing speed limits or upcoming curves.