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Peer to Peer Networking for Road Traffic
alecclews writes "The BBC is reporting on some German research to allow the exchange of information between road vehicles about travel conditions using peer to peer networking (I assume some sort of mesh). Cars or bikes experiencing problems would pass data that would ripple down the chain of vehicles behind them. 'For example, cars could spot oil on the road by combining temperature readings with wheel traction information. A wheel slipping on the road even though the temperature was not low enough for frost or ice would suggest oil or another slippery substance was present. Once a car detected this sort of danger, information about it would be generated and passed down the line of vehicles approaching the patch of oil.'"
Could prevent pileups at the least. Of course anyone with such a system could potentially be tracked.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Now any idiot with the right cantenna can bring any highway to a crawl by inserting bogus messages into the mesh. "Look out! Slippery road. Warning, stopped traffic ahead. Pull over, emergency vehicle approaching from behind. Look, Elvis!"
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I've been thinking about this one on occasion for a few years now...
The only things that need be passed along are current GPS location ( deliberately imprecise by about 20ft ), current velocity ( deliberately imprecise by about 10mph ), last 5 secs acceleration on all 3 axes and a time stamp.
The other function that a car should do is listen to the traffic going the other way and pass on an average of what it hears. ( This averaging function is crucial. It enables velocity and location to be reported without giving up evidence of speeding.
As an example: northbound traffic reports the four pieces of data. Southbound traffic listens to it and averages it. A minute or more later the southbound traffic repeats that to the northbound traffic who are soon to encounter the situatuion. It keeps repeating it - interspersed with other data about other locations - with decreasing frequency as it gets further away.
It's application like this that should make the need for more IP address space obvious. There are other ways, but nothing is so elegantly simple as handling your car's computer as just another device on the network, addressable on the Internet when possible. In the not-too-distant future, it should be possible to access your car's performance data without buying expensive equipment from the manufacturer.
When the motorbike comes after to the point of danger, information has been spread out by wireless network and the danger will be propagated to the driver in the motorbike Dr Anselm Blocher
:P
I read this three times and thought I was retarded.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
This reminds me of snowcrash:
Out in the world beyond his yard, there are other yards with other doggies just like him. These aren't nasty dogs. They are all his friends.
The closest neighbor doggie is far away, farther than he can see. But he can hear this doggie bark sometimes, when a bad person approaches his yard. He can hear other neighbor doggies, too, a whole pack of them stretching off into the distance, in all directions. He belongs to a big pack of nice doggies.
He and the other nice doggies bark whenever a stranger comes into their yard, or even near it. The stranger doesn't hear him, but all the other doggies in the pack do. If they live nearby, they get excited. They wake up and get ready to do bad things to that stranger if he should try to come into their yard.
When a neighbor doggie barks at a stranger, pictures and sounds and smells come into his mind along with the bark. He suddenly knows what that stranger looks like. What he smells like. How he sounds. Then, if that stranger should come anywhere near his yard, he will recognize him. He will help spread the bark along to other nice doggies so that the entire pack can all be prepared to fight the stranger.
liqbase
.... would come from VoIP connectivity between nearby vehicles. We wouldn't be as prone to road-rage type behavior if we could easily speak with people in adjacent cars. If I could say, "Ahem, excuse me," instead of tailgating and flashing my headlights at the idiot camping in the passing lane, both his and my blood pressure would benefit.
A lot of dangerous/reckless driving behavior comes down to the dehumanizing nature of cars. If you see traffic as a collection of people and not anonymous metal cages, you'll be a more considerate and safer driver.
Automatically spotting and checking for oil on the road... yeah, I guess that's cool, but it's not the most important use of this tech.
We once had this idea for a global voice network. Everyone would have a number and accept calls by default, and people could talk to each other. One guy on Slashdot knew better, though. He informed us that people could call businesses with bomb threats, for example, and disrupt the economy. Adults could call children and try to abduct them. Random businesses could harass individuals with marketing calls. Loopholes abounded and there was no way to fix the system without breaking it more.
We would have called this a telephone network, but we had to give up on it since its security was obviously so flawed. Thankfully that guy on Slashdot saved us all that wasted infrastructure money. Nothing good would have come of it anyway.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Last I heard, a year or so ago, there was a limited rollout planned for some luxury cars in the 2008 model year, with some simple car-to-roadside communications (map updates, traffic signal status, etc).
The new part here is using AI to sort out what information to give to the driver, and how. It's obvious that if you're not careful, you'll swamp the driver in information.
Coupla other items:
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.