Abstract

The automobiles of today may be viewed as human-engineered adaptations, designed to serve the changing needs of users seeking personal mobility. The subject of human needs in the context of an automobile and the associated psychometric mappings into engineering requirements has a rich history, with a large body of literature in the science, engineering and practice dimensions of the field. This field deals mostly with mechanical systems, biomechanical interfaces, and more recently the use of electronics to replace mechanical systems, and the results of this work are the automobiles we see on most roads today, around the world: Safe, clean, quiet, economical and fun to drive & ride.

For the most part, however, these cars are “move alone” entities – oblivious to the resources and requirements of the information rich world in which they have been created and where they are used.

In the past few years, an additional class of needs has begun to take shape, and its origins are not directly from human users, instead they are from machine peers. This talk presents an overview of the design demands that these machine peers, in the form of mobile and fixed information systems are placing on the design of future automobiles – vehicles which respond to human needs & the state of natural resources through the power of modern control, communications and computing sciences.

Motivated, in part by prior work on a subject of Cognitive Radios [1]-[2], we refer to these future automobiles as “cognitive cars.” This talk presents an overview of the practice of designing automobiles with intelligent computing architectures and is aimed at motivating a discussion on the role of information sciences on the future of sustainable personal mobility.

1. Mitola, J., III ; Maguire, G.Q., Jr. “Cognitive radio: making software radios more personal,” Personal Communications, IEEE Volume 6, Issue 4, Aug 1999 Pages: 13 – 18.

2. Haykin, Simon, “Cognitive Radio: Brain-Empowered Wireless Communications”, Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Volume 23, Issue 2, Feb 2005, Pages: 201-220.