Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/54910
Competing against the toughest opposition in the country, Knight Rider proved its mettle in recent years during the semifinals of the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Challenges, two international prize competitions for demonstrating driverless cars. While these contests aimed to drive the development of a completely autonomous vehicle, major manufacturers already integrate several assisted driving systems into cars on the market today. WHAT F THEUTURE HOLDS current technology, the public's hesitancy to let computers control their vehicles, liability and legal concerns and the lack of critical infrastructure needed to support a network of autonomous vehicles. Pillat and his team predict the first autonomous vehicles that are available commercially will mostly function on highways and in urban areas. Cars will retain their manual controls, which can be used in scenarios where computer navigation is limited, such as in rural areas. Gary Stein, a member of the Knight Rider team who focused on artificial intelligence systems, envisions future vehicles that won't operate individually but instead will communicate among themselves via a complex network of cell towers and road sensors. "Instead of treating each car as an individual unit that has to make all of its own decisions, when this technology becomes common in the future, there will be more interconnection between vehicles," said Stein. "Rather than having to react to somebody up ahead cutting you off, there will be a communication system in place and your car will know what other vehicles on the road are doing." While Pillat and Stein disagree about how soon our "For example, cars available today in the United States can parallel park themselves or make sure the driver stays in their lane," said Pillat. "As a fully autonomous vehicle, Knight Rider was a huge accomplishment for us, but we are still a long way from commercialization." The barriers to a commercially available driverless car are plentiful, including safety concerns with the society will develop and accept driverless vehicles, they both concur that we probably won't see a car like the original talking Knight Rider, "KITT," on the streets for a very long time. "Researchers are still working on the decision-making factors of artificial intelligence," said Pillat, "and that's a whole other element." FOR THE NExT yEAR AND yET FAR TOO LiTTLE FOR THE NExT 10." "SciENcE HAS NOT yET mASTERED PROPHEcy. WE PREDicT TOO mUcH NEIL ARMSTRONG Speech to joint session of Congress, September 16, 1969 Those words still ring true today. Scientists who have the next great idea often keep future innovations as closely guarded secrets until they can guarantee intellectual property rights. Meanwhile, other academics shy away from making grandiose predictions (like so many of the famous scientists of the 19th and 20th possibility of a rocket ever leaving the Earth's atmosphere). In the absence of scientific prediction, will the imaginations of futurist writers and creators then become the driver for the next generation of innovation? As we've seen with research in Florida's High Tech Corridor, we're getting closer and closer to making many science fiction stories a reality. 42 florida.HIGH.TECH 2012 centuries who dismissed the