This chapter contains only one section and is a very small chapter. This chapter basically shows the technological trends of various technologies so that the researchers and practitioners can get the glimpse of these technologies so as to apply them in their studies and applications.
Top1. Overview Of Technological Trends
We are now going through an age of intelligent vehicles. Customers are demanding more and more features for their vehicles and therefore, the vehicle companies are automatically being engaged in finding innovative vehicles in order to serve the multiple purposes of the customers regarding the number of services provided, the quality of the vehicle, vehicle reliability, safety, and various utilities in addition to the special features of an intelligent vehicle. Thus the increasing demands and expectations of the customers serve as one aspect of motivation for the innovation in the world of vehicles. Another aspect for the motivation of innovation is the increasing continuous competitive pressure for any vehicle manufacturing company.
The meaning of intelligent vehicles is that the intelligent vehicles can recognize objects or any obstacle in front of the vehicle. Intelligent vehicles should be able to identify the possible future collisions and should identify the path to destination with minimum difficulty. Thus an intelligent vehicle may contain a differential GPS (Global Positioning System) and collision avoidance technology. In general, modern intelligent vehicles are equipped with one or more of the following.
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Customized sensors
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Close Circuit TV (CCTV)
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Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL)
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Mobile computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)
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Communication systems: Cellular, WIMAX
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Energy system
Advanced intelligent vehicle is expected to be fully computer controlled in the coming years. Many vehicle companies over the entire world are trying to build a better intelligent vehicle with more intelligent features. Some of the vehicle companies which have strong research wings are mentioned below (Casey & Hackett, 2014).
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Volkswagen: Volkswagen is involved in continuous deep level research work for intelligent vehicles. Over some years, this company has been building highly innovative vehicles, mostly hybrid vehicles with some new additional features.
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Toyota: The Japanese company Toyota has shown innovative technology in vehicle manufacturing. The company focuses on environmental and hybrid technology. It also focuses on the safety aspect for a vehicle.
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Ford: Ford Company is also engaged in innovative upgrading of their vehicles on a continuous basis. Recently, a new plug-in device has been invented by Ford so that new technologies can be added to older vehicles as well (“Autonews”, n.d.). The device is called “Ford SmartLink” which can be plugged to a port below the steering wheel so that the Ford and Lincoln models of 2010-2016 models can download the latest technology in order to incorporate additional features in their vehicle.
An intelligent vehicle can have several layers of software components. These are:
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Vehicle control layer
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Driver-to-vehicle interaction layer
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Decision layer
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Digital representation of the world
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Machine interaction layer
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Contextualization layer
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Perception layer
However, we are all proceeding to a data-drive factory in future. Some of the technologies that are expected to drive the future changes in the vehicle technology are described below.