/ News
Study: Intelligent Cars Could Boost Highway Capacity by 273%
You're a terrible driver. Yes, you. Terrible. At least, you're terrible compared to a robot, which is smarter, faster, and more experienced. In fact, if we all just give up driving on highways and let robots take over for us, we could effectively end highway congestion as we know it by boosting the capacity of our existing roads by a staggering 273%.
On a highway filled to capacity by human drivers (which is about 2,200 vehicles per hour per lane), about five percent of the available road space is taken up by cars.Five percent. This is because humans are so bad at driving that we need lanes that are twice the size of our cars, and at highway speeds, we have to keep between 40 and 50 meters away from the car in front of us.
Researchers at Colombia University took a look at what would happen if we started relying on autonomous or semi-autonomous cars equipped with sensors and/or intervehicular communications systems, and the increase in efficiency is fairly incredible, simply due to the fact that cars can safely travel closer together. When traveling at 100 kph, if all vehicles on the road are simply equipped with adaptive cruise control, highway capacity can safely increase by a factor of 1.4. And if all vehicles on the road are equipped with both adaptive cruise sensors and communication, capacity can be increased by a factor of 3.7. And this increase is without any infrastructure modification: it's purely from making our cars smarter with technology that is commercially available today.
So, with 100% communicating vehicles, you'll get 12,000 vehicles per hour zipping along at 120 kph within about 6 meters of each other. Not too shabby, right? Of course, you have to keep in mind that we'll likely to be limited by the percentage of adoption of these technologies, as illustrated in these graphs:
We may not notice the difference right away, but as more and more cars being to implement sensors and communication, the overall benefits will increase drastically.
Decreasing highway congestion is great, and we're all for that. But, it's really one of the more minor benefits of partially or fully autonomous vehicles. Benefit number one is obvious: a car that's equipped wit a bunch of sensors and that knows what all the other cars around it are doing is a much safer place to be than a car driven by a human. I don't care how good of a driver you are (or you think you are): your car, being for all practical purposes a robot, can digest a huge amount of data and make a decision about the best course of action to take in approximately the same amount of time it takes for you to move your foot from the gas to the brake. Our brains just don't work fast enough to keep up, and if something goes wrong, your car will be vastly better than you are at keeping you (and your passengers) from harm.
The other big benefit that we're looking forward to is the opportunity to not have to drive anymore, or at least, not have to pay attention while driving. A car that drives itself (at least on the highway) would give us the chance to be productive instead of wasting our lives going from Point A to Point B and then back five days a week. Plus, robot cars never get distracted, never get tired, never talk on the phone, never spill coffee on themselves, and don't care in the least about how attractive the person is in the car alongside. The fact is, robots have the potential to be the ideal chauffeurs for all of us.
Every time we talk about robot cars we have to mention two things. Thing One is that all of the technology to do this stuff already exists. And not just in Google's fully autonomous cars: there are cars that you can buy today that have adaptive cruise control that can sense the cars in front of them, blind spot sensors that can see cars to the side, and lane sensors that can track lane markings. Vehicle to vehicle communication is nearly a reality too, and the technology has been successfully demonstrated in Europe in the form of road trains.
Thing Two is that the world just isn't ready for robot cars. The government has no idea how to manage them, and manufacturers are understandably concerned about liability. Here, though, things have started to move a little bit, with first Nevada and now California passing legislation governing their testing and use. This isn't going to be a fast transition, but when it happens, it'll be one of the biggest transportation revolutions since the invention of, let's say, walking.
Highway Capacity Benefits from Using Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication and Sensors for Collision Avoidance, by Patcharinee Tientrakool, Ya-Chi Ho, and Nicholas F. Maxemchuk from Columbia University, was presented last year at the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference.
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/intelligent-cars-could-boost-highway-capacity-by-273
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
/ Follow us at:
/ Contact:
For additional information, partnerships and sponsorship, contact:
info@2045.com
Media requesting information and interviews, contact PR@2045.com
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Google
Twitter
Facebook
Я.ру
ВКонтакте
Mail.ru