This paper presents the preliminary results of a study concerning the impact of MMX technology on mobile computing for intelligent vehicles applications, whi ch, because of their hard real-time constraints, is an undoubtly challenging task. More precisely, the low level portion of the processing aimed at the detection of obstacles in the GOLD system, which is the software system that manages the activities of the ARGO autonomous vehicle, has been implemented exploiting the MMX features. A comparison with a traditional scalar code is discussed and the advantage of MMX-based solution presented along with some examples.