5 Advanced Technologies No Modern Day Vehicle Should Ignore

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April 15, 2021 Business

While we still haven’t invented flying cars, the world of automotive tech continuously brings us closer to reduced road accidents and fatalities every year. Things aren’t quite perfect yet, as no technology so far exists that can absolutely, 100% compensate for human driving errors, but we’re getting there.

In this article, we’re going to explore 5 advanced technologies that are leading us towards actualization of concepts like self-driving cars and safer roadways for everyone.

Built-in WiFi

Having WiFi in your vehicle opens up many possibilities, whether for casual or professional reasons. The average person might enjoy internet-streaming radio like Spotify, for example, and having Youtube to entertain the kids in the backseat. On the other hand, long-haul truckers face a number of challenges related to their industry, such as ensuring connectivity for IoT devices related to dispatch and routing.

There are numerous ways to have WiFi in your vehicle, such as a dedicated mobile hotspots and OBD-II dongles, but these come with concerns related to cybersecurity. Plugging a WiFi dongle into the on-board diagnostic port of your vehicle sounds very convenient, and it is! But as with any kind of IoT device, security concerns will always be a factor.

Newer vehicles are actually coming with built-in cellular data connections, which can create WiFi networks. These “truly connected” vehicles provide a host of functionality beyond what you would get from mobile hotspots, such as built-in internet radio and uninterrupted connection to services like OnStar.

Crash avoidance

Crash avoidance technology, such as collision detection systems, are heralded as the future of safer roadways. These technologies often rely on systems like AI machine vision, dash cam imagery processing, and GPS for location analysis, to detect the possibility of an imminent collision. There are several different types of collision avoidance systems, which include:

Forward collision warning systems
Lane departure warning systems
Pedestrian detection systems
Automatic braking systems

Because vehicles are not entirely autonomous yet, and the safety and regulations of self-driving vehicles are still being considered, these systems typically rely on visual and auditory warnings for the driver to correct course, or in the case of automatic braking systems, do the best the system can do at mitigating the severity of impact.

In the future, it is entirely possible that with built-in WiFi and collision detection systems, self-driving vehicles will actually be able to communicate with each other on the road and significantly reduce road accidents by huge margins.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

ADAS is an umbrella category of technologies that, similarly to collision detection systems, are aimed towards improving vehicle safety and avoiding accidents. Some of the categories have overlap with collision avoidance systems in their functionality, but also offer unique solutions for different situations.

Some of the ADAS technology categories include:

Adaptive cruise control (ACC)
Traffic sign recognition (TSR)
Forward collision warnings (FCW)

Adaptive cruise control is an interesting example, because it works in conjunction with forward collision detection to automatically adjust a vehicle’s cruising speed, so the driver doesn’t have to.

There are many categories of ADAS technologies, but they all generally fall into four types: adaptive, automated, monitoring, and warning.

HID headlamps

HID headlamps are an interesting and somewhat controversial technology. On one hand, they provide superior illumination of roads in all weather conditions, and can emit as much as 130,000 lumens from a single 1,000 watt bulb. They require low maintenance, and have a lifespan of around 24,000 hours.

However, these benefits for the driver can also cause significant drawbacks for other drivers, because they are excruciatingly blindingly bright. In fact, HID lights can emit a significant amount of UV radiation, which means they require UV filters to prevent the literal damage of human and animal eyes, similar to sunburn or arc eye.

They can also, in some cases, fade colors – so having someone driving behind you with HID headlamps for an extended length of time could theoretically damage your paint finish, such as (often illegal) homemade kits not built to OEM standards.

Exit warning systems

It’s not only moving vehicles that pose a danger to cyclists, but parked vehicles as well. In fact, ‘dooring’, the act of opening a motor vehicle door in the path of a cyclist, accounts for nearly half of collisions and injuries involving bicycles and motor vehicles, and around 11% of deaths.

Exit warning systems are similar to forward collision detectors, but for objects behind your vehicle. An EWS will alert the vehicle occupants to oncoming objects behind the vehicle, and let you know when it is safe to open the doors and exit the vehicle.