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Smart Car-to-Car Navigation Network in Japan
nomrniceguy writes "Japan now boasts some of the latest technology in zapping computerized data to millions of cars, delivering what may be the world's smartest way to drive. New navigation systems in Japan can quickly tell drivers which roads have traffic jams. A computerized FM radio broadcast system that collects and sends information from more than 28,000 infrared and radio-wave beacons installed along roads, they can also calculate how many seconds it would take to drive through virtually every block of the nation's cities and then find the fastest routes. In tests by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, a Japanese research group, cars connect to other cars wirelessly to get information about a traffic accident or an approaching ambulance."
Since they're all connected, couldn't a malicious worm cause lots of navigation issues?
And back here in the US we can't forsee the need for software that is capable of scheduling planes with increasing demand over the holidays.
/
Let's see:
number of planes *
number of seats *
number of terminal checkins *
number of internet reservation querys
number of database servers =
crash, right?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Wouldn't mass adoption of this technology kind of destroy the point? If everyone was told the fastest route, eventually more traffic would come there until everything was at an equilibrium... but maybe that would be considered ideal by some...
cars connect to other cars wirelessly to get information about a traffic accident or an approaching ambulance.
this is one of the big reasons I have my CB on channel 19 all of the time. it's quite nice.
just have to deal with some of the truckers trying to be funny.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
New navigation systems in Japan can quickly tell drivers which roads have traffic jams.
$ gcc -o nav nav.c
$
Is there a traffic jam on this road?
Yes.
$
And I'm not joking...
People in Japan get the cool stuff because they BUY the cool stuff. However, in the US retailers do not like to take chances. We are conservative in our buying, looking for the greatest value, while the cool factor is what matters in Japan.
This means, sadly, we nerds get screwed.
Upon speaking the destination (speech to text is not perfect, especially if you don't speak the language, so it may take a couple tries) you'll notice a RFID-tagged card issued from the machine and speakers along the sidewalk will guide you to where you want to go, within reason. More modern places will also light the sidewalks with your issued card color, although this relies on service funding by the merchants.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
A few days ago, EU car companies were discussing ad-hoc networks to divulge traffic info. 10 days later we find out Japan is already rocking the island with this technology. We need to stop posting this stuff on Slashdot, otherwise Japan will implement all our cool "Western" ideas before we can!
better luck next year!
leave it to japan.
its just a great idea.
it makes so much sense.
-w
A great hack would be to redirect all the annoying drivers talking on the cell phone, putting on make up, having sex and playing the guitar while driving into the ocean.
...until some political undesirables are directed into a fiery death. "The bridge around this blind corner is NOT out. Please proceed quickly."
Change is good, but not in a wallet.
..everyone drives an ambulance. Then we can all turn the sirens on and all get to work on time.
This is old old news. The Monet carnavi system has live updates of traffic jams, the feature is several years old. It even allows drivers to access live webcams at common traffic chokepoints.
It appears that the submitter did not even read the article he suggested. There is nothing new in the article, in fact, the article is about how drivers DON'T use the long-existing system.
N/T
The US has many more roads than Japan has, over a wider dispersed area. The investment necessary to do such a thing would be impossible to fathom, not to mention the technical challenge of processing all that data. We'll have to be satisfied with other solutions in the meantime.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Lets say this service can detect an ambulance
approacing or any for instance a cop car...
A getaway would be a pleasure either way.
If Japan had any alternate routes to take that were viable. We drove from Tokyo down to Kakegawa yesterday to spend New Year's with my in-laws. 3 cm of snow fell which resulted in the Tomei Expressway (a large north-south toll road and major transportation link) being closed. The trip normally takes about 2-3 hours with plenty of time for stopping to let the 2 year old run around.
We wound up spending 12 hours in the car yesterday. All of the traffic diverted from the Tomei onto local roads combined with the snow and snow-clueless drivers made one massive traffic jam. We were averaging 2-3 km/hr for a large part of the day.
Ok, start the moaning about how Japan has all the cool stuff and we don't. :)
How about let's go and invent something cool first.
cars connect to other cars wirelessly to get information about a traffic accident or an approaching ambulance. Useful, when you're late to work
Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? While people can't see IR, a strong ir will trigger the iris contraction which will reduce visibility. Maybe its too much time in laser labs with IR lasers and other light sources but I feel an odd sensation in my eyes with ir sources slightly brighter than an IR remote control.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822.3.
I'm fairly sure that Dr Benjamin Spock never acted in Star Trek. Did you perhaps mean Mr Spock?
But maybe something like traffic.com would be more efficient?
;)
I think that it would be cool to have an LCD screen in the car with realtime information from something like traffic.com beamed in realtime.
Maybe piggyback on a Sirius satellite stream or something neat like that?
Traffic in Japan can be a nightmare. when I lived there, I remember seeing LED billboard type signs above the highway with colors indicating the traffic patterns ahead.
Actually, I'm surprised that they haven't done the "get realtime data to your car via satellite" thing yet. Traffic & weather would be useful to have. At the very least, it's something to look at when you're stuck in traffic.
Imagine if there were an 'optimum speed' that the computer reccomended that everyone go to ensure smooth flow of traffic. It'd take a lot of processing power, but it could be done.
Now imagine this speed is broadcast out to cars and the speed could vary between lanes. So this pretty much eliminates unnecessary traffic jams and fixes the 'wave' effect of traffic.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Takes an average of 10 minutes to spot a jam with the current coverage (28,000 sensors on 9,000 miles of roads if my memory serves me right).
Over 10 car manufacturers fit this as an optional extra this side of the pond. 30,000 units (in a vehicle population of over 23,000,000) sold to date - still way to go.
Ian W.
RMAO
Contemporary clothing designs straight from the runway are also rather eccentric and may not seem like "good taste" the eyes of the general public either. But it is these new designs that allow fashion to evolve (you don't see petticoats still around...).
If cars are communicating with each other, how long till someone hacks it and makes a traffic jam?
bullshit. no news anywhere except your "talk radio"
of the one thing that does NOT need it. Humans rarely use accurate information appropriately.
It's very easy to avoid ALL traffic jams:
Don't let humans control velocity or trojectory.
Simple -- already tested in California.
Inject.
This is at best old news. We already have this in the UK in various versions.
We have sensors hanging from motorway bridges and along major routes they monitor trafic speed and report when it slows down or stops. Some of our systems also report when you are nearing a speed enforcement camera.
Most of these things need a couple of hundred quid (Sorry USAnians out there quid=GB Pounds) subscription per year. OH yeah and some of them can track stolen cars by using the mobile phone network to triangulate the position of the vehicle, very accurate (about 10 metres resolution) and hard to defeat.
:( that wasn't a troll it was offtopic.. and i was too drunk to post anonymously :"(
yeah, you can tell I haven't had coffee. Sorry for the overuse of the word "realtime" in the original post.
:D
See, I'm trying to do my part to make sure that "realtime" is one of the most overused words of 2005. Looks like I'm off to a good start!
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All I can think of is where Kusanagi takes control of the van and calculates the best route to the suspected puppetmaster. :-)
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
Also, almost everybody has new cell phones with GPS capability. So you're jammed in the cab with 3 Japanese and they've all got their mobile phones out with route maps & current position shown. Heading north through Yokohama there was severe congestion (no, just normal rush hour congestion, I was told). Now everybody is telling the driver what he should do.
The only thing anything worse than a carload of backseat drivers is a carload of backseat drivers with too much data.
I had watched the driver pan his display. It doesn't matter how much data you have, when everything is congested there is nothing you can do. We can't go forward, we can't go back, we should've stopped for a couple of sakes.
OK, after much discussion it was decided we'd use surface roads. These were congested too. The congestion data was only for major roads & highways. OK, so it didn't help. At least we aren't moving any slower than on the highway. The scenery is different, waterfront, docks, warehouses ...
Wait! There is one person beating the traffic. Our cab was being passed! A woman on a bicycle -- steering with one hand while holding her mobile phone in front of her face with the other. Staring at her map.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
... on Japan having advanced (gigabit and multi-gigabit) broadband.
This is while the US still wastes its time arguing over megabit broadband (cable, DSL, and now "broadband" over power lines.).
In some countries you can see when the next bus is comming on your phone. In London we have displays at bus stops that say when the next bus is but it would be so much better to have a map and the current locations of buses on it. In car navigation/traffic jam maps are pretty useless in the city because the jam is _everywhere_. But buses and taxis have priority lanes, I think a million more people would dump their cars and use the bus if they had live bus maps on their phones and bus stops, one of the worst things about taking buses is sitting there waiting for something you can't see because in your mind it takes 10 times longer to come, if there was a map you could atleast watch the dot move slowly towards you. Alas the fairs are going up again (that fucking lair told us he wouldn't) and its all going into a) the pockets of the pigs who now own the buses and b) another 50,000 stupid LCD screens to show crap that no-one wants to see.
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In a city like Tokyo, this would make the traffic worse. When the cars move quickly, the road will support a very high auto density. When there is a traffic jam, the road will support a much lower density.
It used to be, that some of the side roads, due to not being known, would have heavy traffic, but not enough to cause a traffic jam. These side roads were near there maximum capacity. As soon as the side road ussge increeased, the road turns into a traffic jam, and the maximum capacity of the side roads decrease
Now, the total delays for the entire system are increased. Instead of helping, these navagition systems just create traffic jams on side roads that were never had a problem before.
We are the borg.
This is old tech in Japan. The VICS-FM system has been available navigation systems in Japan since at least 1998....
Next stop - in car peer to peer !
My how we laughed at their silly DRM schemes.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
shouldn't the dept label be "moshi moshi"?
Sounds like daily driving in the Boston area. Pre big dig southeast expressway, in particular.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
If they made the beacons monitor the conditions of the driver, they could eliminate alot of traffic patrols as well. Tickets for speeding and other computable offenses between beacons [if close enought] could be issued automatcially and hopefully reduce aggressive driving as well.
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
since everybody is listening to the same channel, doesn't it cause any traffic trouble since all the drivers rush to the same road which is the most smooth five min ago?
to send: "I'm an ambulance" "I'm an ambulance" "I'm an ambulance" ...
This is not the sig you're looking for.
When I was little, I would stare into the emitter
of a VCR remote, and hit a button to see if
anything would be visible. I couldn't see anything, but my eyes felt like I was shining a pen light into them.