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By Koren Wetmore

Imagine a world where you step inside your car and it–not you–does the driving. Such was the vision of young Ging Ging Liu Fernandez ’98 as a girl being shuttled round by her mom to school and other activities. Although it sounds like science fiction, much of the necessary technology already exists. Some of it you may have held in your hand.

From traffic cameras and wireless networks to global positioning systems and cell phones, many familiar tools support the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which is poised to transform both our driving experience and our world. It’s a technological wave surging the nation and Fernandez is delighted to be riding it.

“With a background in communications engineering, ITS was the perfect match for me,” Fernandez says. “I wasn’t great at designing new devices or coming up with new theory, but I love technology and there is so much potential for improving our lives through making transportation more efficient through applications of technology.”

The breadth of ITS is astonishing. It includes systems for traffic signal timing, computer-aided dispatch, on-board vehicle navigation, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure integration, electronic tolling, and even collision-avoidance technologies. In short, it is an “infostructure” for the infrastructure.

IntelliDrive, a federal program to create a nationwide intelligent transportation network, represents one of the largest research...

Full text available to editors upon request.

Excerpt from “The Hi-Tech Highway”
Harvey Mudd College Magazine (The Bulletin)