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Toyota Patents Winking, Laughing, Crying Car
theodp writes "If the patent system ain't broke, don't fix it: The NY Times/IHT reports that four inventors working for Toyota in Japan have won a patent for a car that they say can help drivers communicate better by glaring angrily at another car cutting through traffic, as well as appear to cry, laugh, wink or just look around." The article goes on to describe "...a car with an antenna that wags, an adjustable body height, headlights that vary in intensity and hood slits and ornamentation designed to look like eyebrows, eyelids and tears."
is what part of the car is going to represent the middle finger
...would Herbie the Love Bug count as prior art?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Two Words:
Moon Roof
If you spend a few extra split seconds looking in the mirror at another car's "expression" then you are spending less time looking ahead of you.
2 tonne furbies on wheels
| `
| \,X`\ HEIL HITLER
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...before the first news article "Driver of Glaring Car Shot to Death"?
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
I wonder what expression a riced-out version will show when mom's minivan beats it in a drag race...
Just what we need. All these hotrodders and riceboys that soup up their cars to bounce or sound like they go faster than they're going, and now we have the manufacturers participating in a slightly backhanded way.
This sig no verb.
So does this include a speech distorter so it sounds like the car is screaming obscenities at the rest of the idiots out there?
I'd set mine to "Bender"
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Wait... No, thats totally (for lack of better word, no offense to anyone) Gay. Very Gay. When are you going to make them fly like you promised in the 50's? Thats the future I want. I want a flying car with laser cannons! And missles that come out of the tail pipe! With a racing stripe!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Sounds like smilies for cars to me ;-)
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I hope the inventors complied with their duty to submit a copy of "Roger Rabbit" to the patent office. Benny the Cab anticipates every technology described in the article.
...now I have to deal with being surrounded by crying cars on the way to work.
Screw that.
Did anyone else think of Speed Buggy or am I the only dope that remembers that show?l et/showid-5028/Speed_Buggy/
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServ
Hehehehe... Japan is so funny. Anthropomorphic cars. Hehehe... Can we order them with Garfield stripes?
You know those Chevron cars? Those toy and clay model ones that they use in the commercials and you can buy at gas stations? Well, that's what I think is going to happen. I am going to be laughing my ass off and on during my entire commute if this thing was introduced heavily into the market. As such, it is important to provide safety controls for the drivers and passengers laughing their heads off and not concentrating on the road.
I propose that along with the car that has the expressions, when they get introduced into the general car population deep enough, that each be provided with a driver laughing restraint system, such as a swift kick in the balls by actuating the gas pedal or something.
In other news, a car gets indicted for sexual harrassment.
Herbie, the love bug
The patent system may be broken, but I don't really see how this would be an indication of it.
At least to me, this is not an obvious idea.
Unless of course, you have a Japanese sense of imagination. I'd trust the people who invented Domo-kun , Vending machines for 'used' underwear and heated, self-deodorizing toilets to come up with just about anything.
Forget anger and letting people merge in front of you... Here's what I want my car to be able to express:
1) Oops!
2) New to area.
3) I'm completely lost.
4) Medical emergency.
5) Learner
How many times are we angry with people who just happen to be dealing with one of the above and who we would easily forgive if we knew as much?
Live free or die
Shouldn't the idea be to decrease road rage? It's a great novelty idea, but nothing more. As someone already mentioned, it distracts drivers from watching the road. That's partly the reason why there are many restrictions (at least, in the US) about blinking lights, moving parts, etc., on vehicles. Personally, I think the little spinny-things on the rims are annoying enough, and I'm not looking forward to the car giving me the same head-tilted-back, lower-lip-stuck-out, looking-out-from-under-a-goofy-looking-hat, I-wanna-be-like-the-rappers-on-TV expression as the driver.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
That's great, really, but what I'd rather like/need is a way to communicate with those people behind me, who like to tailgate.
Something like, 'You do not have appropriate stopping distance. Back off, or I'll test my theory by way of brakes.'
Informatus Technologicus
This certainly sounds like it could be useful, as generally more communication is a good thing. But from my own observations, I'm not entirely sure that the other driver knowing what I'm thinking/feeling is a good thing. I've had plenty of thoughts about the asinine driving of other people that probably would have resulted in fights rather than better understanding! I, of course, drive perfectly!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I can see it now... "Driver slipped off icy road when tears (from car) landed on ice"
how about increasing fuel efficiency? (yes, even more.
or making them safer (fundementally instead of bigger and heavier)
or better communication integration for the ever-pressed-to-the-ear cell phones
or better collision avoidance systems
or making headlights that can be "ub3r" that don't blind everyone on the road
Yeah, making sure the car has emotions and becomes more distracting is a stellar idea. Yesh.
For a while now I've been meaning to build an LED display for the back of my car so I can flash messages like GET OUT FROM UP MY ASS and plain old FUCK YOU! to whoever's tailgating me.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I posed a question when I submitted this story yesterday: they claim that the horn only sends one message, and doesn't allow you to thank someone who lets you cut in. How does a smile on the front of your car tell someone behind you thanks? I always found that a simple wave accomplished this quite well, myself.
The drawback is that you'll get the internet/chat room phenomenon. Anonymous communication leads to insults ('u r g4y'), flame wars, etc. Some people would hopefully use it well, but (as with CB radio), it risks turning into a pissing contest.
That said, when you commute you're traveling as part of a community of drivers. I think that having the ability to convey a limited set of phrases ('go ahead', 'thank you', 'sorry/my bad') would be beneficial. Pre-programmed voice macros would solve the problem: give people the ability to transmit, but enfore curteous phrasing. As soon as you open it up to allow people to say anything, it's likely to lead to more road rage.
And make their larger SUVs look like male genitalia?
Or is Chevy already trying to do that with the Corvette?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Right?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This is just the patent for the Toyota Pod concept, featured in one of the Gran Turismo concept games. Here's a little bit more information: http://www.supercars.net/cars/2001@$Toyota@$POD%20 Conceptb.html
I can't wait for the possible dating situations...
Ford F-250 winks at the cute little Toyota Echo.
"Hey good lookin', what's a car like you doin' on a highway like this?"
Will that be premium or supreme?
Can I change your oil?
And my personal favorite:
Wanna flash me?
Thank you, I'll be here all night. Don't forget to tip your waitress and try the steak...
Now my wife AND my car can look pissed at me all the time.
It's not just the anonymity that does it, it's the physical contact. If you go up to some guy in the super market and say "OH EMM GEE YOU ARE THE FUCKING GAYEST GUY ON EARTH DUBYA TEE EFF IS YOUR PROBLEM", you aren't insulated by tons of steel or miles of wire.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
...Therefore I wouldn't expect to see the middle finger much, but I would expect to see all the standard manga/anime visual icons.
There's a good list of them here, along with all the appropriate emoticons, although they left out a bunch of other less common stuff (bloody nose for sexual overstimulation, snot bubble for sleeping, escaping spirit for half dead, completely white from shock, puking looks kind of like a waterfall), and certain mouth patterns (aggressive fangs).
In particular, expect to see sweat drops, popping veins, and funny eyes. ^_^;
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
is the middle finger. As a New Jerseyian (born and raised), I have a sub-two second roll down window/extend arm/raise middle finger time. It's second nature in situations like "soccer mom in minivan on my right doesn't even look out her left window and tries to change lanes into my car." My response then was an instictive, sub-second horn/brake/swerve/flip-bird.
This system is sufficient for any and all inter-driver communication needs I could ever imagine.
Mount it backwards in the front... "TURN YOUR GODDAMN BLINKER OFF!!!"
lamenessfilter, dont use caps, blah blah blah
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I have a issue of Grassroots Motorsports, where they did an autocross competition between a 1965 Porsche 356, a 1967 Jag XKE convertible, and a stock 2003 Honda Odessy minivan.
The minivan, with stock tires, smoked the Jag, and tied the Porsche. With one level better tires, the minivan smoked the 356 as well. Smoked it badly
My old 1974 Fiat X-1/9. Bump the headlight switch just right, and the left headlight pod would go op, down, and back up again. Winking, as it were.
Seriously, the danger from tailgating is that they might rear-end you (duh). If you slowly reduce your speed this greatly reduces the risk of a high-speed read end collision while simultaneously giving them a great incentive to stop tailgating. They're doing it because they think it'll get them to their destination faster. I simply make it clear to them that they'll NEVER get there if they insist on tailgating me.
In my experience, most people get the hint and back off.
As a car is stuck at the lights the eyes will slowly follow some girl crossing the road, and then the hood will pop open..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Back in the 60s, linguists postulated that your vocabulary influences your character, claiming even that bilingual people act differently depending on the language they're speaking.
That would explain why drivers start acting like enraged apes as soon as they enter their cars: They are limited to honking, blinking, acceleration and hand signals.
Kreegah, bundolo!
I mean really.... because there's never been a movie/tv show ever that tried to portray a car as having emotions....
Let's get this clear: Yes, car's have been portrayed as having emotions lots of times.
That is not original.
What is original is proposing this as a real technical solution to an actual problem, as opposed to simple anthropomorphy.
Since human faces have been drawn forever, I suppose the idea of Chernoff Faces would be obvious too. It is not.
Pay attention to the chick in the silver Civic tomorrow, she always flips you off as she passes and you NEVER give her the satisfaction of looking!
You are quite right - the meaning of the word gay has taken on a new additional meaning in society of something stupid or contemptful.
But if this word's new meaning stems originally from usage by homophobic males who used their negative connotations with gay people to give power to a new insult, than it is clear that using this word is an insult to gay people (regardless if it is intended to be by any particular speaker). Every time the word is used in a negative way, it reinforces the idea that there is something bad or contemptible about "gayness".
But for you to just say "blame society" is an ignorant avoidance of the fact that each of us can and should be responsible for our own vocabularies - and be mindful of the affects of various word choices on those around us.
People often use the word "girl" in a negative way - "don't be a girl". This is another example of word usage that creates and reinforces both a negative stereotype and negative connotations of being a certain type of person. What subtle (or not so subtle) affects does this have on girls images of themselves, and on women as they grow up?
Our word choices can often show our deep prejudices, as well as foster these prejudices in those around us and those growing up under us.
The strange-looking 2001 Toyota POD Concept seems to have been a first cut at the emotional car (e.g. light panels turn red to indicate frustration, blue to indicate "sadness" at being out of gas, etc.) The concept car doesn't have the "eybrows", but does have an antenna it can wag to indicate happiness.
Is this a hoax???
The patent number referred to is 6,575,593, but a quick search for that patent number at the US Patent Office yields a patent entitled: IEEE 1394 or USB powered computer light.
Seriously, people. I think this might just be a hoax.
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Seriously. In Colorado (at least in the Denver area) *277 would get you a direct connection to the reckless driving office of the state highway patrol.
You mean to tell me that, in Colorado, you can actually dial *ASS to report idiot drivers? That's awesome!
When will the rest of the states get their acts together?
I always thought that there should be bar lights, red for breaking; blue, green, white, or whatever for acceleration. And have them keyed to a standard applicable to all makes - e.g. three lights of red would mean a certain standard amount of deceleration.
The other thing I always wish for is that trucks and such have a screen on the back showing their view of what's in front of them. Then when you get behind an idiot who is going slow and has no one in front, you know you should/can pass. For those who think this would be dangerous for some reason, remember that most drivers do this already with cars in front, as you can see through them from back to front.
Heh, heh. Maybe the screen could be incorporated into the Toyota idea - if you're pissed off at the person behind you, you could switch to a shot of your face and mouth "fuck off" rather than having the car mimic the emotion.
One last thing that I always wanted were "excuse me" lights. You know, for when you're the dick who cut someone else off (for a good reason, of course!).