Smart cars are the future, and a lot of the big car manufacturers have released news of their own models in the past years. In this year’s CES, Kia Motors has announced a software upgrade to its smart car, the Kia Soul EV.
The drive to turn cars smart can bring a slew of potential safety features that could eliminate accidents. Kia hopes that their partially autonomous vehicles will be in the market by 2020, and their completely autonomous cars will be on the streets by 2030 but for now, their Drive Wise autonomous driving technology is the highlight for the manufacturer.
As the platform for the emerging smart car market, Drive Wise aims to spearhead research and development for Kia, and during CES 2016, the brand introduced a few great features:
- It can read lane markings on the highway, switch lanes, and safely overtake without driver input.
- The car can sense obstacles and pedestrians in a city setting, allowing it to safely navigate past them with minimal driver input.
- While there are self-parking cars in the market, these need driver input to actually find a spot that can accommodate its dimensions. The Soul EV can look for its own parking space in addition to doing the parallel parking itself.
- It maintains a safe distance from the car ahead of it thanks to multiple sensors around the body, and can sense if the driver has been somehow incapacitated and make an emergency stop by the side of the road.
Using the Kia Soul EV as a test car, the Drive Wise technology also has the first step in a human-car interface: the iCockpit. This system asks for the driver to input a fingerprint for security, and can also recognize gestures for vehicle operation. Kia is putting a lot of effort in Drive Wise, which will hopefully come into its own in the next few years as a viable safety system for smart cars that will no doubt dominate the market in the coming decade.
Images courtesy of Autocar
