Calstart Unveils Sensing Device to Prevent Collisions, Bottlenecks
With U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer looking on approvingly, Calstart--the Burbank-based consortium dedicated to fostering an advanced transportation industry in the state--Monday unveiled a radar-like device that could eventually help prevent collisions and smooth the flow of traffic.
If all goes according to plan, sensors the size of computer chips may be built into car bodies within three years that will beep to alert motorists to objects--such as people and other cars--in close range. The device adapts technology developed by the defense-oriented Lawrence Livermore federal laboratory for laser experiments in nuclear fusion.
“What we’re really celebrating today is defense-conversion success,” Boxer, one of California’s two Democratic senators, told a crowd of engineers and Calstart representatives during a news conference at Calstart headquarters. “It is very exciting.”
More than an instrument to help drivers avoid accidents while backing up or changing lanes, the device can trigger the inflation of an air bag and create an “intelligent” cruise-control system to keep cars ahead at fixed distances, easing the bottlenecks common on Los Angeles freeways. Motorists could even use the sensors while parallel parking.
The palm-sized prototype, to be eventually shrunk down to a silicon microchip, detects the presence of foreign objects by emitting 1 million low-frequency radio waves per second and monitoring echoes from as far as 200 feet.
“It actually projects an invisible bubble” around the car, said Thomas McEwan, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory engineer who pioneered the technique over the past four years. “You can’t see it, so you don’t believe it’s there. But it is.
“I envision the cars of the future just bristling with these radars,” said McEwan, who estimated that a car would need about 10 of the sensors to be covered from all angles. The signals put out by the devices are much less powerful than those of cellular telephones. “It’s totally safe,” he said.
Engineers can apply the method beyond cars to equipment ranging from home-security systems to search-and-rescue gear. The sensors may also aid in medical diagnoses.
“We call it a breakthrough” in radar technology, McEwan said. “This is literally the tip of the iceberg.”
The great advantage is that the instruments are inexpensive to make, costing only about $10 for all the components, much cheaper than current technology, according to Amerigon, the Calstart member company that has licensed the new device.
The company has already approached several automotive firms about using the new technology, which it hopes to have installed in cars by 1997, said Josh Newman, Amerigon vice president.
