From self driving cars to peer – to – peer rides, changing the way people move, with technology.
THE FUTURE AS WE
SEE IT
We believe, technology with the power of AI, could bring travel inspiration from people, places and events realtime, relevant to one’s life in the moment. Today we’re benefitting hugely from assistive technology that makes movement convenient, hassle free and at the same time cost effective. Apps like Uber, have enabled peer to peer ride sharing, encouraging one to depend on fellow citizens and not necessarily rely on public transport always. Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), have brought trip planning and booking, to smartphones.
Talking about self driving cars, the world is making massive advancements towards automating driving, that can relieve people to do something else on the way. Recently IBM Watson has enabled a self driving bus called “Olli” that can help people with speech, vision disabilities to easily onboard the bus and move from one place to the other, on their own.
Technology, has enabled people to move from one place to another, within the neighborhood faster and in a cost effective way, with personalized travel assistants (chatbots) helping in travel planning, booking and with apps like GoogleNow recommending best routes to take. Technology has also enabled innovations in long distance travel, simplifying flight bookings, in-flight experience and destination exploration. Today, with the help of VR (virtual reality), we can enable armchair travelers, to experience destinations that they may not be able to travel to. With increased use of smartphones, while on the go – there’s tremendous opportunity for technology to intensify life experience in the moment, on the go.
Google Maps is widely-regarded as one of the best navigation apps. We find it fairly reliable for local travel and appreciate the offline access feature – where you can download specific routes / regions of google maps for offline use. You can also use Maps to discover places like museums or restaurants you’re passing by, and more interestingly, you can also check how busy a place is in real time (as per a recently released update).
Self-driving cars
Imagine if everyone could get around the neighborhood, easily and safely in self driving cars, eliminating the need to drive when tired, unfit or drunk. Time and attention, spent on driving could be effectively utilized in doing other tasks that require your attention, as the car handles navigation, intelligent re-routing, safety instructions, traffic rule compliance ensuring safe and comfortable rides.
Example: Google self-driving car project has sensors and software that are designed to detect pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles, road work and more from a distance of up to two football fields away in all directions.
Inflight apps
Technology is redefining the life in the sky, enabling airlines to offer passengers an engaging in-flight experience, specially hosting people on long distance flights. Being wifi connected during a flight, at an altitude of 35,000 feet could be a delightful experience. Airlines are exploring opportunities with local inflight wifi and GSM internet, which helps people connect with fellow travelers, even when their phones and tablets are switched to “airplane – mode”. This, we believe could change the experience on a long distance flight of say 24 hours. This also enables airlines to continuously engage with passengers throughout the flight. A good proportion of passengers, we think would use their phones to continue watching their favorite series on Netflix, easily purchase food and drinks, share contacts with fellow passengers in a click, browse a virtual duty free shop, download destination information, receive relevant promotions and offers and do much more.
Example: Gogo recently announced a new messaging pass that allows passengers to use apps such as WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and iMessage for under £2 ($3) per flight on most flights in the US and Canada.
Face recognition
With border control and sensitivity around cross-border immigration increasing, facial, fingerprint and iris-recognition are all currently being trialled as ways to improve the experience at the airport security checkpoints, around the world. Specially travelers taking international flights, today immigration check takes a long time, and requires passengers to stand in a queue. With biometrics – fingerprint or iris recognition integrated to person’s identity proofs and visa permissions, people need not wait in the a long queue to pass through this check, this could reduce the time per passenger from few minutes, to few seconds enabling the airport to handle larger number of passengers.
Example: In the US, automatic passenger control kiosks have recently been installed at airports. These kiosks take a photograph and a fingerprint scan for passengers arriving at the airport and match the results to the information stored in their passports. This helps make immigrations secure, error free and faster.
