robots in disguise!

Automakers are always on the move to outwit other rival companies — constantly upgrading parts from BMW headlight to engine parts for enhanced power and fuel efficiency. We have seen the technology grow so fast that it has even been expected that we will be seeing high-powered and well-innovated driverless cars that are considerably robots years from now.

In fact, this year’s Los Angeles auto show holds a design challenge that anticipates vehicles wanting to be robots 50 years from now. Created by Chuck Pelly, the noted designer and teacher, the fourth edition of the event will be themed “Robocar 2057”. He said the theme has been inspired by the recent blockbuster film “Transformers”. And so, automotive design studios within Los Angeles are kept busy producing designs that show how artificial intelligence might improve the automobile and integrate it even closer with human lives.

In such competition, practical constraints such as marketability, fuel economy, safety and even high school physics are most likely placed back in the interest of exercising designer’s imaginations. So far, such cars are retained on papers and kept in digital form.

For Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, the robot cars in the eight concepts are more like Transformers than traditional humanoid bots such as Robbie of the 1950s or Honda’s more recent robot “Asimo”.

The conceptualized cars are set to adopt futuristic technologies on its robotic aspect. And, I mean of technologies that apply the term nano… nanotech, nanotubes or nanofabrication.

Volkswagen, the world’s fourth largest automaker, has its SlipStream for 2057. It is a gleaming personal pod that resembles an upright vacuum cleaner. It flips down and sprouts fins for high-speed cruising.

Mazda, a Japanese automaker, has the MotorNari RX for the future. It has been named after the warrior who founded Hiroshima, the company’s home city. It looks closely like a model of a Fran Gehry building that someone has sat on. It has been designed controlled with a skintight suit of sensors.

Audi, a German automaker, has its Virtuea Quattro with a slogan: “Your holographic avatar”. You may have it compared with Auto Union racers of the 1930s, or sleep spaceships.

Mercedes Benz, another German automaker, has its SilverFlow for 2057. It looks like classically shaped vehicles of the 1930s. It is made of electronically arranged molecules, which can be “dissembled into a pool of ferromagnetic material for easy storage”.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has its Biomobile Mecha that would run on pollution extracted from the air and has nanolaser wheels. It will be adapting the biomimicry concept that allows it to expand and contract to fit available space.

General Motors, an American automaker, has its OnStar Ant that is considerably a kind of minitable. It comes in bunches and arranges itself useful ways aided by flocking and herding software. It has been themed “ubliquitous mobility”, which meant a take on ubliquitous computing, a Silicon Valley buzzword.

Honda and Nissan, Japanese automakers, have the most practical entries in the event. Honda’s 1 4 (meaning one to the power of four) offers convenient car-pooling through combining riders and sections of a car into a single unit suitable for the H.O.V. (high occupancy vehicle) lane, a matter much on the mind of Southern California commuters. Nissan’s OneOne, on the other hand, is a pet robot. It takes the children to school and even plays with them.

Some of those concept robot cars are presumed to be solar hybrids, while some will be powered by hydrogen.

However, most of the technical descriptions seem to be like science fiction. For example, Mazda’s entry designed by Matthew Cunningham is described this way: “The MotoNari RW is comprised of a 100 percent reprototypable, carbon nano-tube/shape memory alloy weave with a photovoltaic coating. This enables programmable tensiometry and fluid movement while insuring efficient energy transfer to the in-wheel electrostatic nanomotors.” That’s quite tricky, right?

The judges in the competition will include Tom Matano, formerly of Mazda but now at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco; Imre Molnar of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit; Steward Reed of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California; and Chris Myers, an expert on robotics. The winner will be announced during press previews for the auto show.

Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the show will open starting on Friday and will end on November 25.