Honda's bringing an autonomous ATV to CES

CES isn’t a car show, yet carmakers still flock to it like ducks to water, eager to show off their techiest wares. Take Honda. It’s not bringing any cars to next month’s show in Las Vegas, but it is bringing an autonomous quadbike, a robot and much besides. 

Let’s start with the quadbike – or ATV, if you’re feeling especially American today. Honda calls it an “Autonomous Work Vehicle”, and says it could be used in the “construction, agriculture, search and rescue and firefighting” industries. Based on a regular quad, it has all-wheel drive and a rail accessory mount system for attachments. Then there’s the robot. The P.A.T.H. (Predicting Action of The Human) is designed to move as smoothly and unobtrusively through crowds of people as possible, delivering its goods without anyone ever noticing it pass by. 

Of more relevance to us are the two bits of software Honda’s showing. Safe Swarm is a ‘vehicle-to-everything’ system that allows a car to communicate with road infrastructure, plus other cars. Honda says it will help vehicles “move fluidly and efficiently without a collision like a school of fish”, and thus improve road safety and traffic flow. 

Meanwhile, there’s also Wireless Vehicle-to-Grid tech. This allows power to be drawn from an EV wirelessly via one of those wireless charging pads and sent back to the grid, and used for whatever. Some EVs can already send power back to the grid, but only via a chunky cable. Very clever. 

What are you looking forward to seeing at next year’s CES?