For many in the tech world, self-driving cars are an absolute future, however, to the rest of America they are just a dreaded possibility.
WATE a local news station in Knoxville, Tennessee polled their social media platforms and requested if their followers were “ready to ride in a self-driving vehicle.” The response from the overwhelming majority, ninety percent, stated no.
However, Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero has made the East Tennessee city a ‘test-bed’ for autonomous vehicles. Saying; “Knoxville is a great place for this to happen because, of course, you have Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Tennessee that are our public sector partners. Also, companies like Local Motors and Gridsmart that are really at the top of their game.”
Gidsmart is a corporation that is known for its traffic camera technology, billing itself as “the world’s only single camera solution for intersection actuation, traffic data collection, and situational awareness.”
“The technology is amazing!”, says Gridsmart CEO Bill Malkes. “Gridsmart is a big piece of this,” adds Rogero, “They have the technology at the traffic lights and at the corners that can talk to vehicles.”
“One of the things that Gridsmart can do is it will take a vehicle that is not connected, build a model on it, and give that information to the connected vehicle,” said Malkes.
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