Vehicles with touchscreen windows?

Looks like GM is picking the brains of others to figure out a cool way to integrate touchscreen windows in cars. Any thoughts? The concept sounds cool, but functionally does it promote car safety?

Vehicles with touchscreen windows

 

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I don't think this is a very smart idea for safety sake but an interesting idea if the car was not being driven and in a parked position. To bad that couldn't be done but we will see more accidents happening if they institute this concept in millions of vehicles and allow them to be used while driving.

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It's only for rear passengers (supposedly), so the main safety would be can they make this would with tempered glass. Although there is the factor of rear vision for the driver with a glowing screen...I know that even with a laptop in the back it affects what you can make out at night behind you.

I can see the kid angle, but I don't like people leaving fingerprints on regular windows as it is, and the whole thing about being able to interact with other cars and see into their windows...kinda weird, but then again I don't use the Facebook account that I was talked into creating, so it might appeal to the younger iPhone crowd.

I would also hope a BSOD would default to just clear glass.

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there are 2 types of "safety" glass used in cars.
the first is actually called safety glass and is composed of 2 pieces of glass separated by a plastic sheet. this type is used in windsheilds.

the second type is called tempered glass and is a single sheet of "hardened" glass. this type is used in side and back glass.

 

You could rig a front system too, however you'd have to have an inbuilt system to identify if the vehicle is in motion or if it's "parked". After all if you are stuck in heavy traffic, you could use a handbrake to identify the vehicle isn't in motion. With the handbrake on you could have the option to use it, once the handbrakes off it automatically goes into a sleep mode and powers off from view. Obviously there should be a manual override for powering it OFF too, in case some dodgy firmware misloads and gets stuck in an ON position even when the handbrake isn't applied. Failing a manual off switch an easy access and directions for removing the particular fuse related to it's operation would be required in any owners manual.

 

How about not driving at all? And I'm not saying not moving around in a car; just not as a driver but rather as a passenger, while the car drives itself wherever it was told to go. Are we technologically far away from such a feat?

With a self-driving car this surely won't be an issue since everyone in the car will be facing each other... unless they choose to watch a movie or play Angry Birds on what previously used to be the windshield.

 

A touchscreen HUD on the windshield could be really useful, especially if it has any kind of thermal sensor able to highlight, say, living bodies approaching the road (deer, drunk people, etc) or help you navigate in inclement weather... though such a system would be ungodly expensive I'm sure...

 

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of completely autonomous vehicles equipped with visual sensors, pattern recognition software, GPS and whatever else is necessary (sans human intervention) to safely navigate through our current road infrastructure.

In terms of raw computer power (storage volume, processing speed) I believe we are not too far away, especially if the Moore's Law remains in effect in the foreseeable future. I'm not so sure about the software capabilities though (pattern recognition, ...).

My guess is that by the end of this century the driver profession will be pretty much obsolete. (Though that might also happen because of exhausting the fossil fuels

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That's not what I meant, but yeah, I do believe that more and more people will be working from their homes in the future. The only thing that surprises me is the slow rate of this transition. (Just looking at the software professionals -- is there any good reason for not having most of them work at home? Not really. And yet, this is not happening...)

I guess this will be closer to the truth if we replace "people" with "politicians." I mean, what the heck do they insist on having those big G20/G8/G-whatever meetings during which huge amounts of money are spent on security measures when they can easily have as many online meetings as they want with a fraction of the money? Nope. They insist on seeing each other face to face and having those "big happy family" pictures taken while police is crashing with the protesters in the surrounding streets... Crazy.

 

It's a daunting task, not because of the amount of info coming in, but because the human brain is good at pattern matching and ignoring things that aren't important. Like was said, the easiest route is to make the roadway very predictable, and then you don't have to break into the AI field.

Of course the dilemma is how you could possibly phase that into the existing infrastructure.

A HUD that warns of problems or gives important data I can see slowly becoming the norm in automobiles. It's the trivial things like games, email, or facebook that needs to stay far, far away from the driver.

I thought of one problem with self-driving cars...if an accident occurs, either between two of them or one of them and a human-driven car, who is at fault?

 

Windows break all the time, that's why they put the electronic goodies on the inside. But it might be good for a very expensive car.

 

I could see the front winscreen and dashboard being replaced with a HUD, this would give increased field of vison too and yes you could replace the drivers buttons with a touch screen

 

I imagine the cars will have something similar to the black boxes in current planes, something that records the last half an hour or so of every action, every video stream taken before an accident occurs. Then, if the accident is serious and cannot be settled immediately by those directly implicated, the whole recording is taken and analyzed by some sort of an authority which decides whose fault it was. If it proves to be an error on the self-driving car side then I guess the car producer should be held responsible for it. (Probably covered through some sort of insurance.)

 

Have you guys seen this? Sebastian Thrun: Google's Driverless Car

Here's a quote: "(...) our self-driving cars have completed nearly 200,000 miles of autonomous driving on public highways."

Wonder how long will it take to see this kind of technology becoming ubiquitous... Any bets?

 

"(...) and now the first license to test autonomous vehicles in the state [of Nevada] has been awarded to – no surprise here – Google’s robotic car."

It's still in a test phase, but surely a huge step forward in favor of self-driving cars.

Here's the full article: Green Light For Google’s Driverless Car As It Receives First Autonomous License.

 

So what if you left your kid to play with his touchscreen car window, you go shop, and the kid sits in the hot car with the windows rolled all the way up so he can play computer games? :bawl:

And autonomous driving? What would you call that? An autonomobile?

 

In my opinion its a great idea to have this technology but it should be implemented only in the rear windows of the car.

 

I was just at my local Lexus dealer and was in their newest car which has voice recognition for all of the GPS functions, so I guess within a few years we won't need touch screens any longer and only have to try and talk to ourselves while driving along. I hope that I don't get laryngitis while driving.