Let’s just get this out of the way now: We aren’t going to see flying cars in the next 20 to 50 years. I know,
I know, Back to the Future Part II (1989)
told us we’d be rocketing around in
souped-up DeLoreans within Marty
McFly’s lifetime. But that movie told us
all kinds of things – such as faxes would
be the preferred form of communication
in the 21st century.
The good news is that we will see a
broad range of optics-based innovations
in the automotive industry that don’t
involve flying. One example: the total
elimination of blind spots using cameras
and software specially developed to combine imaging data, even allowing drivers
to see around objects.
Another: autonomous driving. Imagine
your car driving itself around town, knowing not only where it’s going, but also
when the traffic light is about to change,
which of the pedestrians on the sidewalk
is likely to step into the street, and why
that joker in front of you isn’t driving
any faster.
Photonics, interleaved with other types
of technology, will play a key role in enabling autonomous driving, said Thomas
M. Baer, executive director of the Stanford
Photonics Research Center in California.
Ranging and imaging systems will provide
a continuous stream of information about
the current status of pedestrians and other
Vehicle-to-vehicle and
vehicle-to-infrastructure
communication ... could
help reduce congestion,
facilitating a smooth flow
of traffic with an intricate
ballet of cars, trucks
and pedestrians.
potential obstacles, updating 3-D databases
– much like Google Maps – that characterize the local environment down to a few
centimeters. At the same time, intercommunication with other vehicles through optical
connects will provide information about
what those vehicles are doing – information
about when and even why they are accelerating or braking, for example.
This isn’t just a fantasy, the subject
of some long-forgotten attraction in
Disney’s Tomorrowland. “I’m glad you
asked about that particular time frame,”
said Sven A. Beiker, executive director
of the Center for Automotive Research at
Stanford, when I inquired about automo-
tive applications of optics in the coming
decades, “because 20 to 50 years from
now, we really will see fully autonomous
vehicles.”
Beiker and Baer know what they’re
talking about. The centers are joining
forces to improve vision-based vehicle
systems even further. Stanford has been
at the forefront of autonomous driving
research for some time – famously so
since the Stanford Racing Team and its
car, Stanley, won the 2005 DARPA Grand
Challenge, the goal of which is to fund
research to develop autonomous vehicle
technology that will help to keep soldiers
off the battlefield (see “On the Road with
Junior: A tale of optics and driverless
cars,” Photonics Spectra, October 2010,
p. 34). Many of the systems that will
facilitate autonomous driving in the
future can already be found in their
research vehicles.
