A Unique Solution to Traffic: The Driverless Car

One indus­trial design firm, San Francisco–based Mike and Maaike, has taken a unique approach to this prob­lem. “Our cities—and really our lives—are greatly influ­enced by these prod­ucts we call cars,” Mike Simonian, co-owner of the firm, told Organic Connections. “With the dif­fi­cult times the auto indus­try has had recently, and the excite­ment around the com­ing wave of alternative-fuel vehi­cles, we believe now is the time to rethink the way cars are designed. We asked our­selves: What is the ulti­mate dri­ving expe­ri­ence? Each per­son in our stu­dio had a dif­fer­ent idea of this, but what was con­sis­tent was that none of these ide­al­is­tic visions really involved dri­ving at all. As our French intern, Laure, said at the time, ‘I just want to sit back, relax, and enjoy the view with a nice glass of wine, some cheese and a baguette.’ We came to this con­clu­sion: For us, the ulti­mate dri­ving expe­ri­ence is not driving.”

Thus was born the con­cept of the ATNMBL—short for Autonomobile, a title that merges auton­omy with auto­mo­bile. The whole idea is you step into the vehi­cle, sit back, relax, and just tell the ATNMBL where you want to go. And you get there.

Although it sounds like sci­ence fic­tion (and sci­ence fic­tion has sure seen its share of such vehi­cles), a closer look reveals the fact that much of the tech­nol­ogy required for such an inven­tion already exists. GPS, sophis­ti­cated sen­sors, and nav­i­ga­tion data­bases would allow dri­ver­less vehi­cles to oper­ate on the same roads we have today.

The atn­mbl cer­tainly takes a dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent direc­tion in vehi­cle design. It’s a lot more like step­ping into a com­fort­able liv­ing room or lounge than climb­ing into a car. There is no steer­ing wheel, brake pedal or driver’s seat, and win­dows allow views on all sides. It is designed from the inside out with ele­ments influ­enced by archi­tec­ture and domes­tic inte­rior spaces with­out ref­er­ence to auto­mo­biles of the past. The vehicle’s mechan­i­cal com­po­nents are densely packed and sim­pli­fied, pro­vid­ing dra­mat­i­cally more inte­rior space in a vehi­cle that is shorter than most cars on the road today. Electric motors in each wheel pro­vide all-wheel drive. Electric power is stored under­neath the seat­ing and floor, and addi­tional power is pro­vided by solar pan­els on the roof. Within a grid­ded pat­tern on the front and rear is an array of head­lights, tail­lights and sensors.

Obviously such a con­cept would not be well received by the power-hungry classic-car set—but Mike and Maaike don’t nec­es­sar­ily see such dri­vers as their pub­lic. “The feed­back has been polar­ized and very depen­dent on age,” Simonian explained. “Some peo­ple who grew up, as I did, in an era where dri­ving rep­re­sented free­dom, see the idea of no longer dri­ving as a threat to this free­dom. Meanwhile younger peo­ple, whose free­dom is defined more by com­mu­ni­ca­tion and technology—namely, con­nected social networks—have reacted quite pos­i­tively. In fact, many see dri­ving as a dis­trac­tion from all of the other things they would rather be doing. Interestingly, when we talk to seniors who are either get­ting uncom­fort­able dri­ving or are unable to drive alto­gether, this con­cept rep­re­sents an enor­mous sense of free­dom and the abil­ity to stay mobile for longer.”

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Simonian’s descrip­tion of what would be a typ­i­cal expe­ri­ence with the ATNMBL is, to say the least, intrigu­ing. “Summoned either by call­ing it or through a phone appli­ca­tion, ATNMBL would arrive at your loca­tion, wher­ever that might be. Upon enter­ing, you would be asked a sim­ple ques­tion: ‘Where can I take you?’ Imagine get­ting into a lim­ou­sine and the dri­ver knew how to get any­where; knew all of the addresses of your friends, fam­ily and busi­ness; knew your pref­er­ences and could intro­duce you to new places and expe­ri­ences, restau­rants, nature and enter­tain­ment. Rather than sit­ting in traf­fic push­ing the brake and the gas and steer­ing in and out of lanes, you could spend your travel time doing things you want to do: call­ing peo­ple, e-mail, games, movies, exer­cise, read­ing, learn­ing about your sur­round­ings, or sleeping.”

Simonian points out the dif­fer­ences in liv­ing that ATNMBL would make. Ultimately you would regain hours of your day that were pre­vi­ously wasted dri­ving. In addi­tion, ATNMBL could autonomously rent itself out to peo­ple within your trusted social net­work (think Facebook or Linked-In apps), thereby mak­ing you money while you are at work instead of sit­ting parked, like most of our cars do for 22 hours a day. Besides vir­tu­ally elim­i­nat­ing traf­fic acci­dents, our cars would be net­worked, cre­at­ing new ways to con­trol traf­fic flow and ulti­mately elim­i­nat­ing traf­fic itself. The envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits would include a dras­tic reduc­tion in energy use and emis­sions from trans­porta­tion, increased car­pool­ing and fewer cars.

The ATNMBL is only a con­cept at this stage—targeted at being imple­mented by the year 2040. But the firm—which has con­tributed major inno­va­tion in design to the G1, the first phone to run Google’s Android oper­at­ing sys­tem, and the Xbox 360 gam­ing system—is mak­ing this effort now so that such tech­nol­ogy even­tu­ally finds its way into the main­stream. “We will def­i­nitely see ele­ments of this sort of approach in future pro­duc­tion cars,” Simonian said. “Ultimately, the tech­nol­ogy will evolve from sys­tems that are already in our cars today, such as cruise con­trol and collision-avoidance sys­tems. Our con­cept is designed for 2040; we are self­ishly hop­ing it arrives by then so we can enjoy mobil­ity well into our golden years.

“We cre­ated the ATNMBL con­cept to pro­voke new con­ver­sa­tions about cars that focus not only on what’s under the hood but on the entire dri­ving expe­ri­ence. By look­ing at cars in an expanded way, we may be able to improve not just our trans­porta­tion expe­ri­ence but our envi­ron­ment and our lives.”

To find out more about the ATNMBL, visit Mike and Maaike’s web­site at www.mikeandmaaike.com.