The fully automatic car may be down the road a ways, but cars that do your thinking for you are just around the corner -- they watch out for hazards, they listen to you, they read your lips, they even know when you're distracted. Alan travels to Germany to find out what happened to the research program originally intended to develop cars that would drive themselves. He finds the goal changed; DaimlerChrysler engineers now working on technology that will help the human driver by alerting him or her to potentially dangerous situations. Equipped with stereo cameras, the research cars are now able to recognize hazards that the driver may have overlooked -- like bouncing balls or wayward pedestrians. In a strikingly realistic driving simulator called VIRTTEX at Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, Alan finds out for himself the distraction caused by using a cell phone in a car traveling at high speed on a highway. The VIRTTEX simulator is also being used to study how tiredness affects a driver, and is helping to develop ways to alert the driver to his or her potentially deadly inattention. At IBM's Industry Solutions Lab in Hawthorne, New York, Alan goes for a drive with a virtual smart passenger named Sally. Sally listens in to the driver all the time, picks up on what he or she is saying, and responds appropriately. Sally also knows the driver's likes and dislikes, so if Alan says he's hungry she directs him to the nearest Italian restaurant, not a German one! Sally also checks to see if the driver is showing signs of sleepiness, and offers to play a game -- such as "Name the Tune" to keep him entertained and alert.

Full URL?