A LOOK AT your inevitable Robocar future. “But a car that can drive itself is only the beginning. The long-term vision is to combine smart cars with smart roads. That is, an advanced connected car will drive autonomously, and it will tap into the sensors and beacons that will festoon future roads and highways, leading to the ideal of crash-avoiding or crashless vehicles. This will also enable platooning, in which cars drive at a steady speed and follow each other at a set distance. The resulting car train or road train will be completely controlled by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and interaction with the so-called automated highway system (or intelligent transport system). The ultimate goal is an autocar that is so intelligent and so safe that you could fall asleep in it—the pie-in-the-sky, head-on-the-pillow sleeper car.”