WATERLOO REGION — Sometime in the next year, drivers in new Cadillacs will hit a button that engages what General Motors calls Super Cruise, and the big cars will roll down highways — no hands on wheels, no feet on pedals.

"It is pretty much high-speed, hands-and-feet-free driving with a camera that reads into your eyes whether you are alert, awake and attentive," Mark Reuss, the auto giant's executive-vice president for global product development, said Thursday.

Reuss calls that the next big step in semi-autonomous driving, and it is a done deal. It is indicative of the big changes coming to vehicles in the next five years, and the even bigger advances during the next 10 and 20 years. And GM is planning for all of it.

That's why Reuss and David Paterson, GM's vice-president of corporate and environmental affairs, toured the University of Waterloo's automobile research facility and the Communitech Hub on Thursday. They are thinking about the technology and software future vehicles will need.

Reuss said he was blown away by the automobile-related research being done at the university, and the way corporations engage with the cutting-edge technology of startups at the Communitech Hub in the Tannery building.

"We are going to look first here to establish some real talent bases for software and technology, that's the basis for looking here," Reuss said.

Based on Reuss' comments after his tours, the visits went very well and could easily lead to more research-based partnerships.

"In the next five to 10 years things will really change rapidly," he said. "But what happens after that?"

There is lots to think about it — what does the interior of the car look like? How much of that is software-based, and display-based and reconfigurable?

"We don't have the answers to those questions. We want people who are able to look at those things, experiment with some of those things, and develop some of those things," Reuss said. "And we have to have that capability ready to go."

While touring the university, he saw students working on electric cars, solar-powered vehicles, the eco-car and hydrogen fuel cells. He was doubly impressed to find out that many of the students do that because they love it, not for a course credit. He talked with young people who can help solve the software and technology questions for the cars of the future.

"As we look at the next 20-year horizon we look at places that may have people that really have that capability, this is one of those places, and that's why we are here," Reuss said.

Reuss visits a lot of universities, but he said he has never seen a place like the research garage at the University of Waterloo.

"There are multiple things in there that are incredibly valuable and useful for General Motors," he said.

Some of the big changes to cars are a few years away, and others more than a decade.

Technology will one day be built into every new vehicle to help drivers avoid accidents. It is called collision-avoidance and it is not as far off as people think, Reuss said.

A small box inside each car will broadcast the location, speed and direction to every other car around it. It will alert the drivers to pending collisions, or automatically hit the brakes.

Most of that technology is already developed, but the best practices and standards need to be set by the industry and government regulators, he said.

On a longer-term horizon, the Internet juggernaut Google is developing a driverless car. The prototypes have logged more than 500,000 miles with no serious accidents.

Reuss said GM takes that very seriously, and wants to be prepared for when Google builds and markets its first driverless car. Google researchers have said that is more than 10 years away.

But it will not be easy, even for a company as big and rich as Google.

"This is not a casual business," Reuss said. "You don't see Chinese cars in volume in North America because it is a very regulated, mature market in the three countries in North America, so the barriers are not low."