Yet over 80 percent of this information is made of repetitious elements that waste transmission time and storage memory. Compression is the electronic equivalent of dehydration in that it removes repetition from information in computer form. Decompression adds the repetition back in for human listening and viewing. Examples of likely long-term embedded system applications include smart highways and smart building structures. On the smart highways of the future, motorists, assisted by their cars' computers, will experience increased safety while traveling, even though there will be more cars in the lane.
Computer control can put cars closer together and still ensure greater safety than exists today.
The embedded system would monitor traffic and road conditions and interact with a central system to let cars travel at higher speeds with fewer accidents. State and federal transportation agencies are evaluating various approaches that might become commonplace on freeways by the first or second decade of the next century. Smart structures will be able to compensate for earthquakes and winds by linking motion sensors to computers, which in turn will change the building's center of gravity. These active buildings would cost less to build than today's passive structures because they would need less material. They would also increase occupant comfort because they would compensate for changes in the outside environment fast enough to prevent the building from shaking during an earthquake or hurricane.