CES 2019: Hitachi car-summoning tech can think on its toes
Cars
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Here at CES 2019, autonomy is all the rage, and that's why we're at Hitachi's booth, checking out some of their cool self-driving technology.
The one that impress me the most is the new long rain summit technology now.
We've seen the ability to [INAUDIBLE] with smart phone before, but what's interesting about this technology is the way that it seemlessly transition between a [INAUDIBLE] path that's estabklished when you park the car, and things that may happen along the way which you didn't expect.
In the demonstration, for example, it's parked nose-in.
But when you summon the vehicle, it dynamically backs out and makes a three point turn.
It then gets back on the path that you established when you parked, but then there's a shopping cart in the way and it just smoothly goes around it.
In the demo there's also a human that steps out from between two vehicles.
And the car is able to sense that.
Stop for the pedestrian and then pick right up along the way.
Meanwhile the user back at the summoning point is getting a live update of where the car is, how far away it is, and what's happening.
Is there a person in front of the car?
Is it going around the shopping cart?
All of that shows up live on a smartphone app.
In addition to this technology we also got a glimpse at Hitachi's road sensing camera technology.
It uses two stereoscopic cameras at the front of the car to detect bumps and dips in the road.
So, if there's a pothole it can see that pothole before you get to it, and it allows the suspension to adapt before you hit it as opposed to when you hit it.
That means that the bumps gets smoother, there's less noise in the car.
And it's a much more comfortable ride.
Hitachi told us that in the future they'll be able to even use this technology to check speed bumps and perhaps even slow the car down automatically because not only do you want the person in the car to be comfortable, you want those outside of it to be more safe.
That's when you look at the most interesting technology that's actually showing off at CES 2019.
Be sure to check out the rest of our coverage of the show for even more cool car technology.
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