The Connected Car. If you haven’t heard the term before, you certainly will in the near future.

Connected Car can have a lot of meanings, but in the world of technology it refers to your vehicle being connected to the world around it.

Using modern technology, the car could be connected by satellite link, cell phone data communications, WiFi, Bluetooth, camera and even Sonar and Lidar signals.

Many of these technologies are already in use, but in the near future, some say be as soon as the year 2020, these technologies will be combined to enable production vehicles to drive by themselves for many of our everyday driving situations.

If you have been watching the auto industry, you are probably already aware that there are vehicles already built that can drive themselves.

Some of this is partial assistance, such as the Ford and Lexus park assist systems that will automatically detect a parking space big enough for the vehicle and then steer the vehicle into the parking spot.

These are in production already. Other prototypes, such as Nissan’s autonomous driving Leaf, are capable of driving down the highway, passing vehicles, taking off ramps and coming to a stop all by itself.

Mercedes-Benz has had prototype vehicles for several years that are able to drive autonomously and just last year Volvo showed off a prototype car that would seek out a parking spot and park itself — without anyone in the car!

Many of the components needed to make an autonomous driving vehicle are already in production vehicles.

Lane departure detection and electric steering systems can keep it on the road, while collision warning systems and distance-sensing cruise control can watch for objects ahead.

BMW already has camera technology that monitors speed limit signs of all types and displays the information on the dash display.

Blind spot and cross traffic information can be used to monitor traffic for changing lanes or passing other vehicles, while camera systems already in use could be used to watch for oncoming traffic as well.

To give some idea of how developed these camera systems have become, Mercedes Benz has a system in Europe that will look at the road ahead and watch for bumps, holes and dips.

In real time as you are driving, the camera information is used to change the shock absorber settings to that when the wheel hits the bump or hole, the damping instantly changes to absorb the impact and then just as quickly changes back to normal settings.

One of the latest products shown has been Ford’s Automated Fusion Hybrid Research vehicle.

Ford chose the Fusion Hybrid for this research because of the high level of technology already in this vehicle that allows it to park itself, respond to voice commands, detect dangerous driving situations and help with emergency braking.

Partnering with the University of Michigan and State Farm Insurance, Ford is using the research project to test the limits of full vehicle automation.

Ford’s part is to develop the unique components and logic making software so that the vehicle can understand its physical surroundings on the road.

The University of Michigan researchers use the trillions of bytes of data collected to build 3D models of the surrounding environment, while State Farm is helping assess the impact in implementing this type of vehicle capability to lower the rate of rear end collisions.

Many of the sensors needed for the research were already available on the Fusion Hybrid but the addition of four scanning infrared light sensors named LiDAR (LIGHT Detection and Ranging) are used to scan the road at 2.5 million times a second.

LiDAR uses light in the same way bats use Sonar (sound) to map their surroundings.

The prototype test vehicle has two rotating pods on the roof of the vehicle about the size of tomato juice cans (not the most attractive, but it is a research vehicle). Scanning the area in arcs completely around the vehicle, it can bounce light off objects 200 feet away and are so sensitive they can sense the difference between a paper bag and a small animal nearly a football field away.

The information is used to generate a 3D map so the vehicle can drive safely on its route and it reacts to moving objects so it can make safe decisions.

The maps are stored in the memory so the next time it travels the route it can detect differences and fine tune its performance.