Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent
Smarter than the average car (Image: Melanie Gonick)
An experiment at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology has highlighted some of the hidden risks inherent in (supposedly) smart cars that will depend on radio-based Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for extra safety on the road.
In an ITS system, in-car computers communicate with each other over vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) microwave radio links, while the cars also communicate with traffic lights and roadside speed sensors over a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) radio signalling system (the infrastructure transmits information about cars that are too old to have ITS systems fitted). When two cars are approaching a junction and the V2V/V2I speed signals suggest they are going to crash, a warning can be sounded or a software algorithm can choose to make one of the cars brake, for instance.
I tried this out on the Millbrook test track in Bedfordshire, UK, in 2007: speeding towards a junction in a Saab my brakes were automatically applied to allow a speeding Opel to pass in front of me. It was by turns scary and impressive. But if it hadn't worked I'd have been toast.
But MIT engineer Domitilla Del Vecchio says such systems can be over-protective, taking braking action when there is no real threat. "It's tempting to treat every vehicle on the road as an agent that's playing against you," she says in an MIT research brief issued today.
Smarter than the average car (Image: Melanie Gonick)An experiment at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology has highlighted some of the hidden risks inherent in (supposedly) smart cars that will depend on radio-based Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for extra safety on the road.
In an ITS system, in-car computers communicate with each other over vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) microwave radio links, while the cars also communicate with traffic lights and roadside speed sensors over a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) radio signalling system (the infrastructure transmits information about cars that are too old to have ITS systems fitted). When two cars are approaching a junction and the V2V/V2I speed signals suggest they are going to crash, a warning can be sounded or a software algorithm can choose to make one of the cars brake, for instance.
I tried this out on the Millbrook test track in Bedfordshire, UK, in 2007: speeding towards a junction in a Saab my brakes were automatically applied to allow a speeding Opel to pass in front of me. It was by turns scary and impressive. But if it hadn't worked I'd have been toast.
But MIT engineer Domitilla Del Vecchio says such systems can be over-protective, taking braking action when there is no real threat. "It's tempting to treat every vehicle on the road as an agent that's playing against you," she says in an MIT research brief issued today.
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