Super smart vehicle system—Its concept and preliminary works

The Super Smart Vehicle System(SSVS) is information systems for drivers 20 - 30 years from now which are solutions to problems caused by automobiles and automobile traffic. The two year studies on the SSVS was begun in 1990 fiscal year under support by MITI. In this paper, first, present status and problems of automobiles and automobile traffic in Japan are described, and then, histories of information systems for automobiles and automobile traffic in Japan, which were efforts for the solutions, are explained. Japan has long histories in the information systems, where the CACS and the Intelligent Vehicle with machine vision were developed. The SSVS, integrating driver information systems and vehicle control systems, has been derived from a new concept of info-mobility, and the SSVS is realization of the info-mobility. The SSVS consists of 4 fields: information systems for a single vehicle, information systems for inter-vehicles, information systems for vehicle-to-road relations, and studies on vehicle-to-driver relations. Some of system candidates proposed for the SSVS are introduced.