This video seems a bit like technology-meets-Reading-Rainbow in its approach, but it does show possibilities for the future in travel and in sitting at home watching your drone have a wonderful day outside. Or the drone can check traffic up ahead or how long the line is outside your favorite restaurant or whether the parking lot up ahead is full. The car comes with a drone. The 3D-printed car has not been made, but Local Motors is in exactly that business, with work on 3D-printed driverless vehicles.
Beware: The video is part of a public relations effort. Korean initiative has sensors seeing colors The sensors for driverless vehicles that are being developed in Korea do not only see colors - as in traffic signals - they communicate with sensors on roads. Driverless meets CV. The CV or connected vehicle and road sensors give each driverless vehicle information from beyond its own little moving structure. Working on this are a mobile phone carrier, SK Telecom and Seoul National University (SNU) Intelligent Vehicle IT Research Center.
In terms of reaction time, when quick thinking or braking is necessary, machines - including driverless vehicles - are way ahead of humans. What we require seconds for, to assess a situation and react, a driverless vehicle can currently do in tenths of a second. Think what it takes to barrel to a stop when traveling at 80 miles an hour. This article explains the details in terms of safety of driverless versus human drivers. And that driverless vehicle you eventually ride in might be a 3D printed vehicle., such as the one Local Motors is showing around. Ditto for the house you live in. More and more companies are getting in this game as well. A new term: Additive manufacturing. There's no waste in this polymer world. We might not have cars anymore, but you could use the garage for a giant 3D printer. That's not even a joke.
