Slashdot Mirror
Automakers Working on Car-to-Car Ad-Hoc Networks
LouCifer writes "The Register is reporting that BMW, Audi, Daimler Chrysler, Volkswagen, Renault and Fiat are working with a German government grant to help develop a standard method for car-to-car wireless networking dubbed 'NOW' (Network On Wheels). NOW is based on 802.11 and IPv6 to allow inter-vehicle communication based on ad-hoc networking to share traffic information. With routing capabilities, the hope is the vehicles will be able to warn each other - and the drivers - about bad weather, accidents and road problems. A prototype is expected by mid-2005 with field trials to start late Q1 2006."
"Wait... This can't be right... bad weather... everywhere!?"
Nothing can go wrong here. Is this the IT dork equivalent of the famous redneck "hey y'all, watch this"?
can get spam and porn too...
I know what's on your hard dr
I can see it now. Road rage to new extremes. Kick ban people for tailgating.
Imagine if this technology were built into large parking lots, so you would know upon entering where the nearest parking place was that did not have a likely parker approaching ahead of you...
The CB App. What's your 20?
"Michael, there's a hooker two corners up on the right."
President Bush Supporter
A little spoofing and I should be able to convince all the people ahead of me and next to me that there's an accident up ahead and they should take an alternate route.
It's called CB radio
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Now Entering... #401-West-Toronto on crc.ontario.ca
Welcome yup28! Please read the !rules
[p1geon] hey yup!
[yup28] !rules
[yup28] oh hey p1ge... just checking rules... brb2min
*** OPP1 sending you rules.txt: Read them carefully please, and you can help stay safe while driving.
[alsz847] Yes! I just got the lastest version of XP over C2C. Remember when we used to have to pay for it before MSC went under???
[geek-boy] Yeah? Where you headed now anyway?
[geek-boy] omg that was years ago als... you must be old
[speedy] WTF Cut me off asshole!!!!
* speedy slaps geek-boy with a large trout
[geek-boy] Sorry... I was lighting a smoke.
[angel-eyez2] heya boys...
[alsz847] it says this has some new features like a fenderwall and splat... wtf is a splat
[geek-boy] hey angel... you are looking spiffy today!! *whistle*
[angel-eyez2] pfft ya right that hair is so y2k... nice try tho studly studderson
[speedy] als: it's a bug remover... for your windows... except it cleans windshields too
[alsz847] Argh. I crashed.
[alsz847] Hold on guys.
[speedy] serves you right driving like you're on crack ffs j/k
[alsz847] Is there an admin in here???!?!?!?!
[alsz847] FUCK ME!!! AAAARGGGGH I"M ON FIRE!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH IT HURTS!!!!
[geek-boy] you ok d00d??? omg!!!
[angel-eyez2] i'm near him... his car's on FIRE! 0mg he's cute!!!
[angel-eyez2] msging admin for him
*** OPP-J55 has entered #401-West-Toronto
[speedy] thank god, a cop when ya need one
[OPP-J55] What seems to be the problem?
[angel-eyez2] check my pos, OPP... I'm at the accident with alz
[yup28] hi is anyone here?
[[[* C2C: {car2car}]]]
1. Viruses.
2. Malware forcing ads onto speedometer.
3. Hackers reversing the pedal controls.
and of course...
4. Car networks becoming sentient and attempting to destory humanity.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
I think it would be great to be able to send messages to other drivers. I'd like some precanned ones like 'Get out of the left lane slowpoke', 'Try a turn signal', 'Off My Ass' just to name a few. I realize that this probably isn't what the article is about (of course I didn't read it) but that's what comes to mind when I think of a car to car network.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Now I'm going to start seeing "PWNX0R3D N00B" on my car stereo every time someone cuts me off...
First, they're going to install communication systems on all cars, then I'm going to lose all my points on my cab-driving license after the car phones home during an accident, then they're going to ask me to save the universe.
...Multipass!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Great. As if cell phones are not a big enough distraction, now we'll have to contend with drivers downloading mp3s, rolling game rooms and drive-by hackings.
126
Ask me about my vow of silence!
Hurling profanities out the window was starting to strain my vocal cords.
Looking past the uses in TFA, one good though far off possibility is to have cars all travelling to the same route "train up" real close to each other - one lead car makes the decisions, cars can peel in and out as their route dictates etc. For long journeys, rotate the front duty, just as you see olympic cycle teams do. The long chain of cars uses less fuel than the same number of independant cars, and behaves only slightly more complex than one car.
Obviously this is in the self drive car realm of probabilities, but hey, we might as well try.
Oh yeah, "imagine an ad hoc network of these" jokes coming soon
Carol: I just hate driving down to your 'rents for Xmas, honey. The traffic on 95 is horrible, particularly at the Delaware Bridge...
Bob: I've got an idea... an hour before we leave, I'll just hack in a traffic report of a huge accident so that cars will re-route. It will be clear sailing for us!
Carole: Oh, Bob... You're such a hot stud. I'm so glad I married Geek...
Most promising impact is said to be achieved by communicating Anti-lock braking system information between cars. Complexity is minimal regarding the information to be processed, as well as how to display warnings:
Put on a warning light and a beep, when roads get icy.
Whew thats a relief, better keep it the way it is, don't want it to drop to 1%...
Finally we'll be able to mod other drivers properly:
-1, Crashbait
-1, Tailgater
-1, Ugly kid in rear-facing seat on long trip
+1, Thanks for actually using that turn signal thingy
+1, Hey hottie, can I get your phone number?
it could tell you about it when you get into your car.
You start the car and it says "I5/405 interchange is blocked, would you like me to map another route?".
or your lost and you could pull over and bring up mapquest.
or it detects that vehcals in front of you(say 30 - 40 cars in front of you) have started decerating at an alarming rate, and it pops of a warning light.
Only your imagination will limit the options...and science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually I hate to say it but I can see some privacy concerns. Some of the benefits could be the networking of cars to provide a great moving mesh allowing Internet access to all the cars. Great for things like sending weather radar to the car, recording traffic congestion on the road, finding the cheapest gas, or hotel, or a restaurant that you would want to stop at. It could also summon help for you if your airbag goes off. Track your car if it is stolen. The downside is it could report speeding and auto ticket you. It is at best a double edged sword. I can tell you that when I was evacuating from Hurricane Frances it would have been real helpful to have some of that data.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
the only thing holding it back is liability.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Better Now we can do file sharing with each other while on the road - now RIA, thats what I call a moving target!!
How long until they combine this with the upcoming black box recorders in cars so my car can politely inform the officer that while I'm not speeding right now, I was going 15 over three miles back?
Drat! My car is gonna look really ugly covered in tinfoil.
I think something cool would be a HUD for every window. Like the HUD you see in flight sim games where other 'ships' are shown as dots or squares or some sort. Then you could set it to show you the 'name' of every vehicle (which you set as you get in) and the speed and relative distance of each vehicle. This would be especially useful in snowy, foggy or rainy weather where visibility is limited.
You could have the option to toggle what you see as well.
the cars all start asking each other if they've seen someone named Sarah Connor.
Essentially, it's exploring ways that moving vehicles can automatically set up temporary links with other cars, bikes and trucks in the vicinity, and share traffic information.
I'm stuck on how the hell you would operate a connection like that while on a bike. At least when I ride a bike, I use two hands - and I haven't quite mastered the Doc Oc technology yet.
However, I bet a -lot- of the truckers out there would love to transmit pictures to reckless drivers of what happens when four wheelers cut off 18 wheelers. "Here is your car. Here is your car being scraped off my grill after you pull in front of me and hit the brakes."
He's just zis guy, you know?
I've always wondered what would would happen if I were hit with spam at 130kph.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
"You've got no traction" ...
.
"Goodbye!"
You mean, throwing paintings, or what?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
You've never dealt with black ice, have you? Maybe you live too south to worry about it.
It being cold has nothing to do with an invisible patch of ice all of a sudden being there, in the middle of a plowed and salted highway, where you wouldn't expect it.
Every "major snowstorm" we have in MD, like last Sundays (hah, as a Canadian migrant I laugh at your candy assed excuse for "winter"), there are invariably these pileups of multiple dozen cars, all driving too fast, too close, not expecting that patch of ice.. So they slam into each other like moving dominoes.
I hope these systems evolve to take the inexperienced American driver out of the equation. There are few of us with actual experience driving in real winter situations. I want the first car to hit the ice to warn the ones behind it. I want the cars behind it to automatically decide that they will not go above, say, 45mph (whatever the inevitable law said) until passed the "danger zone".
They always say you cant legislate common sense. But you can approximate it with a computer, and legislate the use of that computer.
Then we can do away with traditional speed limits, and rely on our smart cars who know how fast it is safe to go, based on the situation - how crowded the road is, weather conditions, lighting...
Hell, operational status of the vehicle should be a metric for such an algorithm. I see so many poorly maintained, downright dangerous piles of rusted shit on the road.
I want my car to be smart enough to stay a minimum of 500 yards from any piece of shit car.
An easier, more practical use, would be tailing someone - following another car (not spy shit, like Jim following Sue through some city he's not familiar with). You could tell your car "Hey, dont let me lose that blue hyundai", or some such.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
[It's called CAN] and like I2C, its been around for ages.
You are mistaken about CAN. You either didn't read the article too closely or you have no friggin clue what CAN is. Probably the latter given your incoherent off-topic rant about Linux (WTF?).
CAN stands for Controller-Area-Network. It is not limited to use in automotive applications--it is a widely used technology for industrial automation (intelligent devices that use the open communications standard called DeviceNet). In and of itself it provides no wireless functionality, ad-hoc configuration and doesn't use the IPv6 protocol (or IPvANYTHING--it uses CIP). In automobiles, it is used by electronics systems to communicate with and control various systems. The diagnostic port on mostly European cars is handled by CAN chips.
It cannot communicate at speeds over 1 megabit per second, and it cannot communicate outside of the automobile or local control system network without extra help. OTOH unlike ethernet it is fully deterministic and has reliability mechanisms at the hardware level (that is, it guarantees data packets arrive when you want them, in the correct order).
This new thing has NOTHING AT ALL to do with CAN...it looks more like "Rendezvous for Cars" and looks very interesting indeed. Of course, with all the exciting useful things comes potential abuses (mis-applied, could Big Brother monitor and collect data about your driving behaviour? Photo radar is bad enough already).
I had this idea years ago, but it was limited to just wireless internet, not using it to report specific local conditions to the node.
I don't think it will catch on. Why is this any better than just putting some permanent fixtures in certain areas with some long distance optical/radio transmition? How is having 50 cars in a traffic jam going to give you any more information than one permanent camera with some robot vision?
Also, the permanent fixture gives you the option of knowing about things even when your fancy cars aren't around.
Do you really want to let Big Brother into your garage? It's bad enough that insurance companies may start monitoring speed to offer lower rates. I have a great driving record, no accidents, no tickets in quite a while, but I regularly drive 5-10 miles over the limit, more in some places (they have some antiquated speed limits in my city). I hope this fails miserably.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I think many of the posters here are over-estimating what the capabilities of this network will be.. at least initially. The idea is for vehicles and on-board navigation systems to be better aids to drivers.. not for drivers to talkchat/IM back and forth. I envision something like a cop rolling up on the scene of an accident, firing up his computer and broadcastign that an accident has occured. This message gets shot bak up the road in both directions informing cars of the accident. That's it. It's then left up to the nav system to decide which route one should take. Of course the vehicles will be estimating the congestion and stuff, but that's all minor details. Yes.. there is a the possibility of script kiddies and hackers doing devious things, but that's the nature of the beast. Those implementing this network need to be careful to implement things in a secure manner.. firstly that means using something stronger than WEP (if they fuckin; use WEP, I'll kick some ass!).
What is your penile percentile?
I used to work for a company that tried to deploy selfrouting 802.11b network.
If you talk about proof of concept, it works. But for real usage, it sucks. Main problem is to detect what is usuful neighbor. We used to send some control messages (although there already are beacon frames in 802.11), and to collect its signal. But signal strength is not a measure of link quality. As long as there is direct optical visibility, signal level can be really low, but link will be perfect. If you don't have optical visibility, you will receieve some packets, probably most of them - but once you try to send some real traffic over that link, everything will go to hell.
Algorithm (we used to use AODV) per se works ok; there is a whole theory about these algorithms; but in a case of 802.11b, there is no mean (at least no mean known to me) to detect what neighbor is useful one.
As a result, we had to abandon this idea, and we moved to static routes; but it does not help in case of moving vehicles.
All in all, don't expect this to work too reliably except when you are close to access points (or "access points", since this will be ad-hoc mode of 802.11b).
No sig today.
Eastern Standard Tribe Aparrently instead of paying a toll for the New Jersey Turnpike, one downloads music, then pays for it at the gate. Don't ask me tho...
There has been an idea to use this sort of technology for a while- Circumnav Networks aims to allow cars to share information on traffic patterns and such, so that the driver can determine the quickest route to his (or her) destination.
Their website is a little sketchy, but from what I hear, it looks cool.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
More like popups on my windshield saying "Airbag deployed 1 mile ahead. Traffic is now at a standstill. Click here to order Viagra while you wait."
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
This sounds a lot like the Car-to-Car peer network used for music trading along the Mass Pike in Eastern Standard Tribe Great book and definitely worth the download.
"But that's O.K. I don't have anythig to hide!"
"Mrs. Buttle, we deeeply regret..."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You've got flipped off!
Or:
It looks like you're trying to insult the driver in front of you. Would you like to:
Honk horn
Flash headlights
Send goatse to other driver's HUD
Try this: http://www.roadragecards.com/samples.htm Rather convenient communications and the information travels at the speed of light. Booya.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
How do I hack the car-to-car network to install Seti@Home on all the cars that I pass while driving?
is for a way to communicate with the vehicle in front of me. Is that so much to ask? If people could actually talk to the person in front of them, there'd be a lot less high beaming, horn honking, etc.
"Would you mind getting over please? There are about 20 cars behind you and you've been driving the same speed as the car next to you for the past 5 miles."
Of course when they reply with, "I know! HAHAHAHAHA," that should be free license to shoot out their tires and/or eyes.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere