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New GPS Navigator Relies On 'Wisdom of the Crowds'
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times is running an article on Dash Express, a new navigation system for automobiles that not only receives GPS location data, but broadcasts information about its travels. Information is passed back to Dash over a cellular data network, where it is shared with other users to let them know if there are slowdowns or traffic jams on the road ahead. The real benefit of the system isn't apparent until enough units are collecting data in a given area - so Dash distributed over 2,000 prototype units to test drivers in 25 large cities."
I don't see how this has anything to do with wisdom of crowds, but the idea certainly isn't new. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/31/168228
That's cute coming from someone who can't even spell "stupidest".
Come on, this isn't the "Wisdom of Crowds". This is just collecting and organising a lot of information from asked from different people. We should keep the "Wisdom of Crowds" tag for times when knowledge or decisions spontaneously emerge, otherwise it'll become another meaningless buzzword.
This can be used to track specific individual vehicles. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which side of PATRIOT you hang. I can see this becoming a compulsory addition to car electronics in the next couple years.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
"The Wisdom of the Crowds" does not apply here. TWOTC applies to aggregated decisions made my groups of people. This is more akin to a routing algorithm than individual assessment of a condition.
If you assume that most people don't know anything about a certain condition, those who don't know anything will probably cancel each other out 50-50, but the percentage of people who are knowledgeable about the condition will make more correct assessment. Therefore, when all the choices/assessments are aggregated, the knowledgeable choices will tip the median assessment in the right direction, and the crowd's assessment will be appear to be more reliable than individual choices.
In this particular case, there are several specific traffic algorithms that apply to a variety of traffic patterns, and since the information is being fed back in near real-time, it makes the service more useful.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
What a great useful idea. The fact that we are all tracked to the m.
Along with the fact that our purchases are tracked
The fact that our medical records will be available.
and a host of other privacy erosions
We're slipping guys and there's no stopping it
I'd like to carpet bomb america with nukes.
Could you please stay out of my crowd. I need to increase its wisdom quotient.
I had this idea ages ago. Privacy and Big Brother issues notwithstanding, it makes perfect sense. If the average speed of cars on the M4 Westbound at Chippenham is my tracker with in mind. (Although I don't know anywhere I can get access to a free route calculating API though).
Get your own free personal location tracker
I've heard that OnStar installed in cars will be able to shut down cars. For instance, if the police are chasing a vehicle, they can have OnStar disable it, which turns it down to idling speed, forcing (or allowing) it to pull off the road. Of course, they plan to have some common sense restrictions: police cars will need to be near the vehicle before they cut the gas.
before users get a button to press when they see a speed trap? If enough users report a speed trap at a given intersection or off-ramp, the system could issue an alert to other drivers approaching the area. People would love that.
Here's a counterpoint. While this is not really a "wisdom of crowds" application (being rather just a mass data aggregation scheme), it's worth noting that crowds are prone to fads and other mistaken behavior. Mass decision-making seems to work best with unconscious decisions, choices that everyone makes but does not think about a whole lot.
:-)
I could see this system working, though, at least reasonably well. If I see a lot of GPS units going to a particular area, and then slowing down and stopping, I might want to avoid that area. Unless, of course, I'm on the way to a football game or something like that.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
I had an idea similar to this last year, but I wasn't planning on transmitting data through the mobile phone networks as that could get costly. I thought that each unit could automatically connect to any open wifi network and download the traffic information for the whole country, much like this one sounds like it does. But, when units pass each other on the road, then they should compare time stamps and then update each other to the newest copy. At that point they could also update each other on slow downs and where they happen, as well as slow downs taken from other units as they passed. This would avoid the expense of a mobile network and the risk of a centralised collection of data.
I currently have one of the mentioned Garmin units here in the UK that uses FM bands to pick up traffic information. The biggest problem is only the major routes are updated, and even then are sometimes missing traffic jam information.
This unit does sound very good though, and I look forward to getting my hands on one.
There is no argument why a mobile phone operator cannot generate this anonymised data and sell it to GPS companies. They know how many cells are in the area and how they move already, so it's more a matter of how to package that data and sell it - this would also be more cost effective than cells having to phone out to report where they are under a separate system - this works anywhere.
:-).
Users could then subscribe to a service like the Tomtom Traffic service which works with a quick data call to uptain localised data status - as the user pays for that it's not hard to develop a cost/benefit model for it. At the moment (AFAIK) this service uses traffic reports which - if I go by what my radio tells me - are never quite up to date.
Logically, all the building blocks exist - it's a matter of putting them together and avoiding privacy issues. Given the enormous (and IMHO ill judged) appetite for too much details about individuals I think we're quite a way off yet
Insert
Why dont these companies use mobile phone data to update this information? Eg mobile phone companies can track how many phones are at a certain location. The more mobile phones are at a certain location (even speed could be measured) to more likely there are traffic jams.
To do this on your own (nav comapny) is just plain inefficient.
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
The ones that aren't transcend the buzz with the passage of time. But I hear you, it can be painful.
Quack, quack.
Oh, and in addition to that, data is fed to the device via Traffic Updates System so you can avoid delays. Also, there's a Speed Trap Database as well. All available for a device costing a couple of hundred quid (or about $200 with the usual corporate $1=£1 currency conversion).
Not to worry though. Like most things, give the USA another few years and they'll have caught up - by which time we'll have moved on again. Sad that a country that contributed so much innovation is nowadays resigned to always being a few years behind purely due to the greed of the corporates.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
It's one of many ..
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FTA:
"data collected anonymously from Dash units is added to the group database"
and
"Dash's outgoing information is sent over a cellular data network, which is also used to receive things like minor software updates and traffic alerts. Large amounts of data, like major map revisions, come through the Dash's built-in Wi-Fi receiver. The unit will automatically spot open Wi-Fi networks and connect."
Finally,
"The prospect of a G.P.S. unit continuously reporting a car's speed and location gives some drivers the willies, but Ms. Bender said that the information was sent anonymously -- there was no way to know which car it came from. If the unit is stolen, the company can send a signal to erase its memory, including driving data and the address book, so that it can't be extracted."
Hopefully your unit will not be stolen while you've parked your car overnight, or even for a hour, so you'll have time to get them to send the kill code before the unit is compromised.
If this thing connects to Wifi then it must have a unique network ID, ditto for GSM. Sounds like a gift for the DHS guys.
Now, where is my tinfoil hat?
Most jams are fairly transitory. What this system should do is make the car slow down just enough to prevent the jams in the first place. How many times have you been behind any idiot who hits the brakes but slows down way too much for the conditions, and so makes you brake too much etc etc. If you keep your eyes on the traffic in front of the car in front, you do a much better job of keeping a decent average speed. Of course that also means you can't tailgate at 80+ mph, which seems to be de rigeur these days. It also means that you can't take advantage of a jam to catch up on paperwork, or to engage in meaningful face to face conversation with the person in the back seat, I mean come on, you're supposed to be DRIVING a car, not pressing a few pedals according to mood.
Even the police here (UK) have started using rolling roadblocks rather than stopping traffic, because it makes more sense to control the speed rather than reduce it to nothing.
I know from experience, that when on a road with dynamically controlled speed limits (M6 Birmingham, M25/M4 etc) if you actually comply with the posted limit, then you keep moving at that limit. What screws it up are the few wankers who decide that a 50 sign actually means 42 or 60. Another place they screw it up is average speed limit zones. Because they brake when they see a camera, the average goes down by 10 mph, so I can get away with doing 60 through a 50 for as long as I was doing 40. It's so much easier just to read the damn sign and do it. But people don't seem to have common sense any more, it's all me me me, and so the governments have no recourse other than increasingly invasive measures to control our behaviour. And that of course results in the familiar situation of the good being punished for the actions of the idiots.
Everybody is now going to freak out about the "privacy issues".
A) The device supposedly transmits the data anonymously
B) Nobody is forcing you to get it
C) You probably aren't interesting enough to bother watching
Now, privacy concerns are valid and good. I don't want a "big brother" state as much as the next guy. However, how much are we going to let "privacy" get in the way of innovation? Think about how valuable this could be if everybody did have it? Think about the time saved, the gas saved, and possibly even the lives saved. I'd love to know if there is deadlock traffic ahead that I can't see, and I'm still cruising along at 60+ mph.
Now, as far as the privacy goes. I wouldn't even mind if this could be used by law enforcement to catch criminals. What we need is a way to limit when systems like this good be actived. I don't care if the police bust down doors, listen to phone calls, read e-mails, etc... as long as they have a very good reason to suspect the person of wrong doing, and they went through a judge and have the legal authority to use these systems. If there is some good evidence that a person minght be a criminal, I'd love for the police to have every bit of possible information on that person. It makes there job easier and safer, and hopefuly makes the world safer.
We don't need to worry about the technology. We need to worry about the laws that congress passes, and the things that our govenment does that bypass a good solid legal proccess. There are plenty of gadgets in our lives that can be used against us to limit our privacy. That part is done and over. What we need to be conerned about is the actual legal basis for when the government can access those devices. So, before you post about how big brother is going to watch your car, think abougt writing your congressmen instead. Let them know what you think.
There's a company in Moscow, Russia that runs a system very alike to that in article for a couple of years. They use maps and GPS, and also use aggregated traffic data from official provider. System allows users to use communicators to send back movement traces to system to make live traffic jam situation prediction using this social net. Users that send back a lot receive bonuses, like new maps, data receive priority points and new software versions. I've tryed it and it works pretty well in damn rush hours here at Moscow. They are still testing it, actually. sites are in russian. pocketGIS, traffic data provider why we need this pictures
Agreed. And this isn't something new. The two major road data providers, TomTom and Tele Atlas, already have their "crowdsourcing" tools to improve the maps of their GPS Nav systems (and any other other of their customers, such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!). See MapShare and MapInsight, their official tools. Of course, OpenStreetMap is could be considered another pertinent project bridging GPS and crowdsourcing. Oh, and by the way, you have real-time traffic in Google Earth too you know. And we discussed p2p networks for road traffic some time ago.
/. to discuss the last Microsoft Virtual Earth release this week. It's really major. My story submission about it was rejected. There's even a Google SketchUp competitor in there and many features we won't see anytime soon on Google Maps / Google Earth (and other few worthy competitors).
And now, totally off-topic, I would have liked
Animoog.org
We've had this in various guises, both realtime updates and end of day submissions, in the UK for years. Yet again the US is slow to catch up with the rest of the world, yet this is "news". Here's a tip: US tech is not newsworthy unless it really is something new and original. Submitters and editors should try Google, and a couple of other places, before posting to the front page. Perhaps more EU reader should start submitting and become editors, then perhaps we'd see both news, and the realisation by US ciztizen that they're are no long at the leading edge.
--
British English spellings used as I speak and write English, not "USian" or "Mircosoft English"
OK, so this "new technology" will take where you have driven, and upload it to a datacenter where it is "shared" with other people to "help" with traffic notification? Sounds to me like a wondrous attempt to log our travels. Reminds me of the license plate recording camera system used in England.
Less-geeky computer repair alternative for Lansing, MI
Having faced more than a few violent riots, I can say that after a while the crowd gets bored with collective wisdom and resorts to mob stupidity.
.. cause it's not the same thing.
This GPS thing should work good though
I've often thought that units could be designed to store GPS location information when a person goes "off map" into new roads that the unit doesn't know about. Then when the user syncs their device the information could be uploaded to a server where it is aggregated with other people's info. Once a threshold is reached, the company can convert the raw GPS data into map data, then push out a map update with the next sync.
Humm.. that was too early in the morning. Of course, Tele Atlas' competitor is NAVTEQ, not Tom Tom. If I'm not wrong, NAVTEQ is bigger. It has been bought by Nokia last month. While Tele Atlas was bought by Tom Tom themselves earlier last summer, so it shades a new light on my parent post. I don't think NAVTEQ have any "crowdsourcing" type of GPS/Road data tool yet.
Animoog.org
I've seen this Wisdom of Crowds buzzword tossed around a lot recently, as if it were something new... it's not. It's just a new name for something really, really, ancient.
Are people afraid to acknowledge that some natural phenomena and the wisdom of the ages still apply today. If Madonna releases a remake of "American Pie" it's not a new song, it's simply a new singer performing a good oldie.
Tribal law, synergy, Robert Metcalfe's (3-Com) z-squared aka value proposition of a network, a swarm, a colony, etc... all refer to the same thing and have been around for millennia.
Just because the networked global community is finally beginning to understand the value this tried and true dynamic does not make it new, spare me the buzzword du-jour puleez!!!
Hope is the currency of fools
I don't know about the rest of the world, but products like the Road Angel have been available in the UK for some time. They use GPS + a database of known speed cameras. You can report new speed cams by pressing a button on the unit - if enough users report the same location then it is added to the database. I've seen a similar plugin app for TomTom satnav units.
It seems to me this could be used for vehicle pooling to save money for people who want to share rides, if the feedback mechanism is extended.
People who are making a long journey on their own in a car, or who make a regular journey, can key in it's start and end co-ordinates and say when they are going and whether it is a one-off or a regular journey. Someone who is looking for a ride can do the same, or just say where he wants to go to right now. Then the system can match the two and alert the willing driver to the presence of someone nearby who would like a ride to somewhere along the route they are taking. This way they could meet up and share costs, giving people without cars more freedom to travel at reduced cost, giving drivers who are spending increasing amounts on gasoline and road or bridge tolls some means of recouping their costs, and giving people who make regular journeys to work some way of connecting and sharing rides with fellow commuters.
There are existing ride sharing websites, but they lack the possibility for spontaneity that something like this might acquire once a critical mass of participants become involved.
This could be a whole new way for people to share rides, or even the return of hitch-hiking for the satellite age.
It depends on which GPS device I was using at the time.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Speaking as a truck driver I can tell you that CB-Radios already do this.
"Hey North-bound, you better get your ass off that road and find a detour, there's a 3 mile parking lot ahead of you."
"10-4 South-bound, thank-you. There's a Bear with a radar-gun at mile-marker 127."
Just add more profanity and you get the general idea.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This does sound like an interesting idea, but interesting doesn't always equal good. Yes, it might help with traffic avoidance, but it uses the cell network to do so. What happens when some important director of something-or-other decides to use this, and the 'hunters' found out how it works? Makes you wonder if there is any way to have the signal encrypted in any way, so that not just anyone can find a way to tap into it and have a little locator beacon as to where you are.
--"Hm. It seems the waffle couldn't handle it."
Here's a video showing how TomTom MapShare works, and demonstrating a secret undocumented cheatcode!
TomTom mapshare explanation and cheatcode
TomTom Home is a Mozilla xulrunner based desktop application for managing content on your TomTom, kind of like iTunes for GPS devices, but written with open source software, and programmable in JavaScript, XPCOM and C++. The reason for using an extensible open source platform like xulrunner is so TomTom and third party developers can customize and extend it by writing interfaces and tools that enable users to create, manage and share content on TomTom GPS devices (like voices, points of interest, reviews, routes, pictures, music, etc), and integrate TomTom Home with online services and content providers (like Yelp, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc).
TomTom is hiring XUL/JavaScript/AJAX/DHTML Developers to work on TomTom Home and other interesting projects in Amsterdam! TomTom's a great company to work for, in a wonderful location. If you're qualified and interested, please contact me and I'll give you more details.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
What you described is called "Jousting": using automotive GPS devices to track traffic speed, and exchanging traffic information via WiFi P2P networking with oncoming traffic, who just drove by where you're heading. A GPS device with a WiFi antenna pointed forward in the direction of travel can exchange real time traffic information with oncoming traffic, that just drove past the traffic ahead of you in the opposite direction. Jousting takes advantage of the natural flow of traffic to distribute real time traffic information to exactly where it's most needed. As you pointed out, that avoids expensive expensive mobile network charges, decentralizes and anonymizes the data collection.
Of course successful jousting requires a critical mass of participating drivers. So it would be extremely difficult for a small company without a large installed base of devices to pull it off. And of course The Phone Company would prefer that all drivers maintain constant expensive mobile network connections instead of using free WiFi P2P networking to get their traffic information. And Big Brother would prefer that all drivers pay for the privilege of turning themselves in to the Central Scrutinizer the instant they start speeding.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
It would be easy to collect data over time and determine not only when traffic jams happen, but the best alternate routes when traffic jams happen. You could also train a neural network to give you better travel times. Perhaps not so much the "wisdom" of the crowds as it is the "experience" of the crowds. But it is valid, and it could be quite useful.
Sounds like yet another major invasion of privacy under the guise of something else.
I thought of this when I was sixteen. I still think it's a great idea, and I'm glad someone's finally decided to build it.
I'm not sure how it would look, but let's play with the idea a bit. What you'd like would be for each transmission to be signed in a particular way:
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For collecting ordinary traffic data, transmissions need to be authenticated and encrypted (in order to prevent obvious abuses of the system) but remain completely anonymous.
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In case of theft, there needs to be a way to add information to the system so that a particular signature is no longer anonymous but instead is identified with a particular vehicle.
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The information which permits the above identity association must have effect only for a specified window of log data.
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There has to be an efficient way to search the transmission logs for messages with a given identity.
It's obvious that, underlying all of this, the vehicle owner has to be given a digital identity as well, in order to provide authentication for all the other functions. I think that would address your concern about the unit being compromised, though I'm not sure how those would arise.Let's see, what else? There is a trust issue here that can't be entirely avoided. No matter what the manufacturer may claim about the data remaining anonymous, there is no design which prevents transmission of identifying data as part of the payload. About the only way to mitigate this risk is to have the system periodically inspected by a trusted third party. That would also address your concern about network identifiers lower in the stack finding their way into the transmission logs where they could potentially be exploited by the manufacturer. Any other party with access to the identifiers, such as a telecommunications carrier, would make not be able to correlate them with transmitted data since that is encrypted.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
A cool addition to the system would be for it to call 911 if the car gets in an accident. Help would then be able to find the troubled vehicle quickly by it's GPS coordinates.
I'm not sure how this would work technically, but I would imagine that it could tell when the car stops REALLY fast or feels a sudden large shock and call for help.
You can't hide
I once was driving my Camaro at about warp 8 when a driver going the other way flashed his high beams at me. I slowed down, as did the mini-van in front of me, just before driving into the biggest ass speed trap I have ever seen in my life.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."