The Driverless Car (SLIDESHOW, POLL)

The designers who contributed to the Google Phone, Mike and Maaike are in the preliminary process of coming up with the ATNMBL (autonomobile). To be released by 2040, the all-wheel-drive car doesn't have a steering wheel, brake pedal or drivers seat and drives entirely by itself. The size of a parking space, the electric powered car will have an internet sitting room and can fit about seven people. Upon entering the ATNMBL, passengers are asked where they want to go and the car finds the quickest way to the destination.

Read more about the ATNMBL

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Quick Poll

What do you think of the driverless car?

Completely awesome. I hope they make them.

Pretty sleek, but i doubt it could actually work.

I'd rather drive myself. No thanks.

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Comments

[akkadian]

wot no more privacy?
would suit Paris H...

[laikhuram]

driverless or driverfull, we don't need cars anymore. for sure not in the future as well.

[ykk9]

How is this any better? Its like a private bus for every person. and how is it going to interact with all of the people who cant afford one (this concept wont come cheap) or will we all just get pushed aside.

[zenwhenicanbe2]

private bus my thoughts exactly. I didn't like the fact that it looked see through and made out of some sort of glass like material. My first thought was daggers in a crash

[rishi851]

AWESOME!!!!!
Seriously I cant wait for the future to arrive and pre-book this babe

[SCG]

Did anyone notice the bar graphs don't correlate with the results of the poll above?

[jsarets]

It's not aerodynamic, and it's susceptible to crosswinds, especially considering the one-in-front tricycle configuration. The large area of glass will be terrible for maintaining thermal comfort in the cabin.

Autonomous road vehicles are quite a ways off. When I was a student at Carnegie Mellon, the team that won the DARPA Grand Challenge twice in a row attempted a demonstration of its bleeding-edge autonomous vehicle on campus, but it immediately veered off the road toward a No Parking sign and a driver had to stomp on the brakes manually.

The vast majority of passenger rail systems in America depend on human operators. If we're looking for ways to automate transportation, it makes sense to tackle rail systems before attempting the much much more difficult task of automating road transportation.

Heck, even air travel would be easier to automate. Several airstrips around the world have been equipped with microwave guidance systems to support the Space Shuttle, which has an autonomous landing mode (that has never been flight-tested). And as we all know, autopilot has been around for a long time.

[LintLass]

Rail, period would be a better next step. But it would be cool if the world ever gets there.

[Agentlady007]

Monorails are already working in Disney. Why we don't incororate them in every city is beyond me.

[blaharumph]

well said... all great points.

[JuniorRoyale]

I doubt autonomous vehicles will be feasible anytime soon without a means of intelligen­ce/guidanc­e being added to our current roadways.

[GearheadGeek]

Oy... this is what happens when you let visual-design types loose without any functional-design supervision.

Conceptually, there is no real impediment to the creation of mostly-autonomous vehicles, though you run into lots of messy details when you try to work down toward a real-world implementation. Where you run into real issues is when you try to find a market for the stuff. This monstrosity might appeal to a government, but I don't think very many individuals would want to buy one. If you made it less strange and more flexible, so that you could use it on automated roads AND drive it all the way to your garage, or perhaps to your vacation cabin, it might have a shot.

As it is, its about as real as all those flying cars we're driving today. You know about those, right? The ones we've been promised since the '50s? They'll come online at about the same time as these mobile living rooms.

[ChristopherAtom]

No windshield, no sale.

[totalliberal]

Elevators don't have windshields.

[ChristopherAtom]

Really? Your comparing an elevator to a robotic car? I think many people would want to look in the direction of travel. Hard to do if you have a 3-4 ft wide strip of vehicular structure in the way.
Have you ever been on a glass elevator? http://www.universalelevator.com/UEC.Round.Glass.Elevator.jpg

[Kalarchis]

This is a great idea, but that car is ugly. Since when was the fifties back in style?

Hopefully one day all cars will be driverless, doing away with most traffic accidents (and hopefully some jams, but probably not.) But, kind of network required to make that work is a little beyond us at the moment, I think.

[akkadian]

hopefully one day all citizens will be mindless, doing away with decisions and hopefully individuality...

[Agentlady007]

I need more dementional impact security - air bags around the windows, etc. - in case of collisions from abstractions. Could be unsafe at this mode without censors or radar effects.

[missouriwatcher]

There are already too many driverless cars on our roads--the idiots who talk and text on their cellphones, eat, drink, put on makeup, shave, carry on face-to-face conversations with passengers or read while behind the wheel. (Besides, this "idea" was something I heard was already in the works in the early '60s.)

[OkieIntellectual]

Same point I was gonna make. I can't STAND it when I see someone yapping on their cell when they're supposed to be driving. It especially irks me when I see COPS doing this, because they are supposed to be setting an example. All of my friends know that if I'm driving, I won't answer the phone, and if I find out they are driving while talking to me, I will tell them to call me back when they can pull over & stop, then hang up on them.

[Tommygun264]

We already have driverless cars. Its called public transportation.

[Mattcat25]

On the LA freeway system their more like "mindless cars".

[AliciaMarieB]

Many cities don't have public transportation though, especially smaller cities.

[Tommygun264]

I doubt these smaller cities will have the infrastructure necessary to support such vehicles. Practical application driverless vehicles would require dedicated lanes, some sort of navigational lines (invisible track) or fixed beacons at regular intervals incorporated into or along the roadways. Buses, trolleys or even light rail with fixed routes and stops would probably be less expensive. Even the most efficient forms of public transportation can't afford to operate without government funding or subsidies of some kind. I can't see how a personalized private driverless car system could be engineered to operate on a large scale at an affordable price.

[Agentlady007]

We should have cars that are like star wars. Flying magnetic forces resisting the pull of gravity.

[CosmicChaos]

I love the idea of the driverless car, since I am a Disabled woman not allowed to drive. I have been watching the technologies that will allow this to happen slowly become more advanced.

As an Automotive Engineer, I do think that the seating in the concept car above is irresponsible and unsafe. Same goes with the glass windows on the side of the vehicle. A side colision would kill/injure everyone in the vehicle (impact and/or with glass cuts).

Safety before looks!

[CalculatedRiskTaker]

This vehicles safe top speed has to be under 15 MPH

[Anemocracy]

Reminds me of the Total Recall "Johnny Cab".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5k--n7sFI

[TamPhi]

Wasn't there something like this in "Minority Report" too?

[PresidentRobertBooth]

It looks bloody awful


I'm all for environmentally friendly cars, but that doesn't mean they have to look so ugly.

Why can't an eco-car look like a Ferrari?

[tangelan]

Did we think that about the Prius? Now it's awesome.