The Future: The Automobile Becomes a Part of the Digital Hub?

[Shrek]

Imagine this scenario (for example):

A friend picks you up at home and takes you over to his house for dinner with him and his family; he tells you he'll give you a ride home after dark. So you're at your friends house, and suddenly in the middle of dinner the phone rings. It's your friend's father; he says that his mother has just had a seizure and has been rushed to the hospital. Your friend and his family get up and leave quickly without you; there's no time for them to give you a ride home. Figuring that there's no use in sticking around you decide to go home, and home is 30 minutes away by car. How do you get there without walking? Do you call someone for help? Well, you could, but. . .

You decide to go home the "digital way." You pull out your keychain and push a button on it. Suddenly your keychain sends a wireless message to your car, 30 minutes away, using an 802.11x technology. Your car is locked in the garage; it responds to the message (which reads, "I'm at "Joe Blow's" house. Come and pick me up!) and determines your location using a GPS system. Then using a continuously updated road database downloaded from the Internet, it quickly determines the quickest route to your location. The car then talks to your garage door opener. Your garage door opens and your car backs out, and then the garage door closes.

You can guess what happens next. . .

What kind of technology do you think it would take to do this? What might possibly be the limitations of such a system? What do you think it would it take to make this system safe and secure? What other ways might an automobile be used as part of the digital hub? How far away do you think we are from using such a technology in our everyday lives?

I made this all up on my own, BTW. ;)

[big]

good for making that up, your neurons are firing...

it already exists, it takes a lot of revamping of road ways & a special car with a ton of sensors etc etc

but it can happen already, I think the one thing we haven't figured out is AI, time, certain physical properties & genetics

OH, and good architecture....we have no idea what the word "design" means

[bidge]

Even bigger demand for hacking, all you need to do is hack into the car and it's yours, awesome.

[iGav]

SAAB produced a car that could drive itself in the mid-late 90's, from what I can remember it didn't require special bits in the road, the entire car was active, with sensors and what not........ Very cool....

[Mr. Anderson]

It will be quite some time before self driving cars become a reality. The State of Cal. is working on road sensors and special cars for this type of thing on highways, but on rural roads, it'd be a night mare.

At work, we've done somethings in this regard - and even been to a few trade shows with ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems). Minnesota or Wisconsin or Michigan, I forget which, has set up all their Snow Plows with special systems that let the drivers know where they are in a blizzard via GPS and a few other things. So they keep on the roads in a white out.

D