funzone

WITH his jeans, white trainers and stripy top, Bob is every inch the well-dressed 6-year-old. He's standing in the middle of a hotel car park and, scarily, I'm driving straight at him. Instead of hitting the brakes, I put my foot down on the accelerator. With just 10 metres to go, a row of red lights flashes across my windscreen and there's an urgent, high-pitched beeping sound. An instant later, I am jerked forward as the brakes slam on automatically and the car screeches to a halt just short of Bob's stomach.

This is what Bob is for. The child-sized dummy has just helped me test the first in-car system that can sense an imminent collision with pedestrians and brake automatically if the driver doesn't. It is being put through final trials before being launched in May by Swedish car maker Volvo in its new S60 model.

The Volvo system is the latest in a line of developments made possible by sophisticated sensors based on cameras, radar and lasers. These sensors already provide drivers with adaptive cruise control, which alters a car's speed to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front, as well as technology such as semi-autonomous parking systems. Yet according to Jonas Ekmark, a researcher at Volvo near Gothenburg, this is just the start.

Ekmark says we are now entering an era in which vehicles will also gather real-time information about the weather and highway hazards, using this to improve fuel efficiency and make life less stressful for the driver and safer for all road users. "Our long-term goal is the collision-free traffic system," says Ekmark.

Ultimately, that means bypassing the fallible humans behind the wheel - by building cars that drive themselves. Alan Taub, vice-president for R&D at General Motors, expects to see semi-autonomous vehicles on the highway by 2015. They will need a driver to handle busy city streets or negotiate complex junctions, but once on the highway they will be able to steer, accelerate and avoid collisions unaided. A few years on, he predicts, drivers will be able to take their hands off the wheel completely: "I see the potential for launching fully autonomous vehicles by 2020."

By about 2020 drivers will be able to take their hands off the wheel completely

Road traffic accidents kill about 37,000 people a year in the US and 39,000 in Europe, with driver error a contributing factor in over 90 per cent of them. But a glimpse of a safer future has come from a trial, completed in Sweden in 2008, of the Slippery Road Information System (SRIS). The system used sensors and computers installed in 100 cars to gather information on the use of brakes, fog lights, windscreen wipers and electronic stability systems, as well as local weather conditions. Unlike the Volvo system, in which each car uses only information from its own sensors, the cars in the SRIS trial beamed the data they gathered to a central database every 5 minutes.

The study suggested that this pooled data could give drivers a far more accurate picture of road conditions than local weather stations can. Researchers still have to find the best way to merge this information and broadcast it back to drivers. Nevertheless, the study concluded that networks such as SRIS could improve safety and save lives.

A more sophisticated system involving shared data is being deployed in Japan this year. The country has become a world leader in the field thanks to the government's decision to fund a network of infrared, microwave and radio transmitters at the roadside.

Around 2 million vehicles on Japanese roads can already pick up news on congestion, roadworks, accidents, weather, speed limits and parking availability from these transmitters, broadcasting as part of the Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS). Over the next few months, cameras and sensors positioned around 20 major intersections in Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture will begin alerting drivers of cars with VICS receivers to potential hazards such as vehicles attempting to merge into their lane, or traffic crossing an intersection ahead. The new Driving Safety Support System(DSSS), as the set-up is called, can also show alerts on satnav displays warning of traffic lights, stop signs and even pedestrians and cyclists on the road ahead. It will be in use at major intersections nationwide by the middle of 2011.

By that time, a similar system designed to operate on major Japanese highways should have been running for a year. Called Smartway, it issues a warning when the driver gets too close to the vehicle in front, when vehicles are converging from the side, and when there is congestion ahead. Some new vehicles from Nissan, Toyota and other car makers are already equipped to use DSSS or Smartway. Older cars can access these systems too if their receivers and satnav displays are upgraded. From here it is just a small step - in technological terms, at least - to allowing cars to be controlled automatically.