Car of future

Ever since Nicolas Cugnot, a Frenchman, invented the first self-propelled road vehicle in 1770 there has been no shortage of companies willing to make a better automobile. Over years their efforts have given users the gasoline engine, the electric starter, tubeless, tires, fuel-injected engines and anti-lock brakes, these are only a few innovations. What is next? Here are some examples of what the car designers are working at in the world today.

Engineers are experimenting with a state-of-art, system that enables drivers to see well after dark. This “night vision”, system uses infrared sensors that can detect a human figure at night more than 1,600 feet away. That’s five times the distance at which conventional headlights are effective. The sensors pick up infrared rays emitted by any object that gives off heat. An image-processing system scans the information from the sensors, creating different images for different objects. The images are then displayed on a cathode ray screen built-in a car’s instrument panel. It is like black-and-white photograph of an object ahead. And the system is passive, which means no lights are needed to illuminate the object in front of the vehicle. But the biggest problem will be reducing costs and the other one is the size of the sensor mechanism, which is too big now.

One of the latest applications of sophisticated electronics is the wheel-computerized system that not only monitors air pressure in automobile tires but also adjusts it automatically. This system in addition enables a driver to set tire pressure while seated. The system developed consists of three separate modules. The first is the instrument panel display, which houses the system’s main microprocessor, programming buttons and warning signals. The second component is the detector drive module, which is essentially four microchips attached, in one unit, to the chassis. Each chip detects pressure changes that may occur. The transistors within the module signal the third component – a programmable transducer.

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