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Ford's New Radar Technology Based On Open Source
zakkie writes "Ford is releasing new safety-enhancing radar equipment for its 2010 Taurus sedan. The radar itself is based on F22 fighter radar, but interestingly, it's claimed that the software is built from open source. What that may mean, in the vague, waffling context of the article, is unclear, but it's interesting simply because they've gone to the effort of stating it in those words. Clearly, 'open source' is being thought of outside the IT world as a good thing, and that surely is itself a good thing. The purpose of the radar device is to help 'avoid crashes by sounding an alarm and flashing red lights when the driver gets too close to another car.'"
The purpose of the radar device is to help 'avoid crashes by sounding an alarm and flashing red lights when the driver gets too close to another car.
...as well as annoying the crap out of any driver with a radar detector you happen to be driving behind ;-)
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
And hence cause idiots to keep jamming the breaks when you get near them...
I'll take the source to both the F22 radar and the Taurus radar.
Thanks.
GPLv2 Section 3b:
Based on my own driving experience, it seems the trucks need the tailgate alarm more than the sedans!
I'm comforted by the fact that my small car has a very short stopping distance, but it's certainly mitigated when I'm going to get run over by an oversized Hot Wheels in the event of a quick stop.
That way, if my radar doesn't detect I'm closing in on the car ahead I can fix the source code without a recompile and link.
I want the hw and opensource software for the radar system. I think its cool just to mess with but am i the only one that is concerned that this multi billion dollar plane has opensource radar meaning it is probably now easy to jam or detect the plane just by the radar signature. I saw an order for a few of these cars to russia, china, iran, venezuela, north korea. Yeah and people complained that they wore trying to shoot down the F22 project, very stealthy.
What they can achieve with radar is constant 360 degree monitoring. The local police has gray vans that look like ordinary vans. They park them somewhere near busy intersection. The systems in the car track the movement of every car around the van, and automatically take images of the targets going too fast. Basically there are no police officers sitting inside, they just leave the car there and send you the speeding tickets a few days from the incident.
Also, radars have improved in the past years. Most of the new systems have advancements from military radars - they hop frequerencies and whisper instead of yelling. The amount of energy they put out has dropped to 100th of what they used to do. At the same time the quality of the radar systems have improved. The old ones used to have quite high margin of error whereas these new systems are accurate to centimeter/hours.
Lidar is hard to spot but in overall they suck because they can't do all the coolest tricks.
Sounds a lot like buzzword bingo to me.
Mmmm.. Donuts
"The Taurus 2010 will average 17mpg in the city and 25mpg on the motorway, on a par with the competition"
Is this sedan competing with SUVs and trucks?
Is it just me or does this sound like it might create more accidents than it prevents?
Sometimes I recognize that I need to do a correction (speed up, slow down, watch out for some other car driving recklessly, etc.) and my wife recognizes that need at the same time and makes a loud gasp. At those moments I find myself more distracted and occasionally make a stupid mistake (like pressing the brake harder than I need to). I worry that a loud noise and lights may make drivers panic and make poor decisions in response.
Anyone? How about a non sequitur then? No? Fruitcake?
Clearly, 'open source' is being thought of outside the IT world as a good thing, and that surely is itself a good thing.
You know what else is open source? Knives. Used to stab people to death. And many people find that a good thing. Surely it must be.
Also... Nowhere in the text does it say that "the software is built from open source". No. They say:
"...The F22 radar technology which they took and built upon was all open source.... "We then added our own Ford algorithms to determine whether or not objects are a 'vehicle target'."
From what I gather - someone in the "chain of reporting", whether it is the BBC reporter or people at Ford has no clue what the term "open source" actually means (which no part of a clearly still partially classified F-22 Raptor isn't), and is probably confusing it with the term "public domain" - which radar technology is.
Come on. What is next?
A submission of a cake recipe cause it is open source? Look... you can add your own ingredients and develop it further.
How about an open source walk?
You know... as opposed to those covered by government grants and thereby being partially owned by the government.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
With the way most people drive, I see this as a completely useless gadget that will end up being turned off, disconnected, or raising complaints from drivers of cars using it. People habitually tailgate, pass in an unsafe manner, etc etc etc. The damned thing would be going off constantly, and the average driver is going to assume it's broken instead of actually questioning their own driving habits.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
In the real world people who drive like that cause the accidents that clog freeways and streets for hours. Leave for your destination 5 minutes earlier. Don't drive like an ass.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
(which no part of government owned technology used in a clearly still partially classified F-22 Raptor is)
OK, OK... So I've edited it a little more than just "is".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I think we're finally seeing some of the safety features that consumers actually want, rather than safety features that the government mandates. Radar guided cruise control and braking will save a lot of lives and a lot of money by almost eliminating rear end collisions.
Another feature I can't wait to see in the average car is brake lights that flash during emergency braking. The biggest nuisance for me in my 30 mile urban freeway commute is people who get in front of me and use their brakes simply to control their speed. It means I have to concentrate really hard on to figure out how hard someone is braking. A car with flashing brake lights (you're already seeing this on many Mercedes and European cars) will flash its brake lights rapidly under heavy braking so that the driver in the car behind knows to do the same.
It's good ideas like these that save a lot of lives and earn revenue for the auto companies that implement them, like Ford has here.
They are probably using GnuRadio, a software-defined radio software.
Votator.com implements a fair voting scheme (free
Maybe their thinking went like this:
Windows: crashes often, closed source
Linux: doesn't crash, open source
Our car: doesn't crash, so its firmware needs to be associated with, or run, Linux, or the for most people vague concept of open source
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
From my random sample test, indeed the Taurus is on par.
(In case the link doesn't work:)
Ford Taurus 2010 (4d SE Sedan): 18 city / 28 highway.
Acura RDX 2010 (4d Sport) : 19 city / 24 highway.
Mazda MAZDA6 2010 (4d Sport) : 20 city / 29 highway.
Honda Accord 2009 (2d Coupe) : 22 city / 30 highway.
[NOTE: There were no Honda 2010 models to compare]
So not really. Fords claims have held for my test.
With Open Source (GCC)
You know, for some kind of consumers buzzwords help in sales.
75MPH? Where are you going that slow, a school zone?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
"Clearly, 'open source' is being thought of outside the IT world as a good thing"
Because Ford is outside the IT world? Perhaps at somepoint they will hire some engineers and buy some computers and become part of the IT world, maybe get a few cool robots like honda...
I'm all for open source but the plugs get tiring....
Danger!!!, Will Robinson, Danger!!!
So most of the tailgaters I encounter here in California are either impatient asses or what I unaffectionately call celliots. Nothing like driving a Civic down the freeway and having a few tons of a Fraud Excrusion 18 passenger SUV Ultra crawl up your ass at 80+mph because the pilot of said living room on wheels is too busy yapping/texting away. How dare we interrupt their conversations with, you know, driving. I digress. Anyway, why not take this thing a step further? I say add in some RF spectrum analysis and a retractable cartoon-esque metal hand in the headliner above the driver. Once a proximity alert is detected RF analysis is done to check for local mobile spectrum use. If the signal doesn't fluctuate enough in say 5 seconds to indicate a drop in talking or of the call altogether then the previously mentioned paw O' reckoning drops down, taps the driver on the shoulder and if they continue to ignore it slaps them silly and shakes an accusing finger at them. RF jamming tech could work well too but the FCC will have no part of that and well, its just not as cool as looking in the rearview to see the hand dole out a little justice.
I'd love it if, every time some jackass in a Ford started tailgating, his vehicle started yelling at him. But for that to happen we need this feature in the Ford Super Duty, not the Taurus. Funny enough, when someone's car purchase isn't overcompensating for anything, usually it seems that their driving style isn't either.
... and I suspect this is just PR guy/mediot talk. The only thing this consumer-level gizmo has in common with the Raptor is, they both use Electronically Scanned Array (ESA) radars. Unless Ford bought the parts from Northrop Grumman (doubtful, given NG's notorious pricing, bureaucracy, and unwillingness to play well with others), this box doesn't have anything to do with the jet.
I can categorically state that Ford is not using NG's F-22 radar software. Even the prime contractor (Lockheed) doesn't have access to all the innards of those modules.
Dear god, I hope our (now canceled) fleet of Raptors aren't deployed actually on the nation's highways.
Not the word choice I'd use, but if the next phrase is "target locked, clear to fire", well that would certainly help with collision avoidance and traffic congestion.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Anyone got a recipe for Open Sauce?
Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity
I worry that a loud noise and lights may make drivers panic and make poor decisions in response.
Absofreakinglutely correct.
TFA discusses blind spots - good point. How about a simple set of CCDs and an in-dash display for the blind spots?
But the real problem here is Ford and the insurance gang. From TFA:
"The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US put out a report last year saying if every vehicle in the US were equipped with this forward collision warning system, we'd save about 7,000 lives a year," Mr Kozak told BBC News.
Wow. Geez - and just how did they arrive at that fact? By comparison to other similarly equipped vehicles? No, I don't think so.
The problem here is sociological as well as financial. They're trying to "help" us. Just as other draconian measures in society are trying to help us.
Want to save more than 7k lives/yr on the road? Penalize for cell-phoning instead of driving. Penalize for putting on make-up while driving. Do NOT ever have a statistic or a newspaper report explaining how someone has gotten their third time in jail for a DWI - by targeting the real problems.
But do NOT give already lazy drivers comfort in their laziness and tell them that tech makes laziness OK - and that's exactly what this does.
Next step with be our financial penalty - if the insurance kiddies think they have a study that this saves lives, one of them will start offering a discount if your vehicle has it. Give it 2 or 3 years and then it will become a surcharge for any vehicle that does not have it. Oh - and add in the costs for the new studies, the new data tracking and the accountancy.
Insurance companies do give discounts on anything - they do not manufacture a hard product. Instead, as a soft product supplier, they simply shift costs (prices) between various consuming groups. And there won't be a reduction of any sort, given that this increases their cost to provide their product (insurance coverage).
I guess I'll close with this bit of mock-humor: we want stealth technology on our roads? Really?
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
It's common in heavy urban traffic to have a rude lane-changer pull over a car length or two in front of you. It would be interesting to see how they deal with it, but not interesting at all if that involves slamming on the brakes or flashing lights and sirens. As a rule, the correct response is to simply ease off and give them room, as you mentally turn into the bug from MIB, tear off both car roofs and dismember them limb from limb, all the while steering adroitly with your two middle legs.
other than the fact it is a radar I can assure it shares NOTHING in common with the F22's AN/APG-77 radar, no components, software, waveforms, algorithms NOTHING - that is some serious literary license
I used the Eaton VORAD automotive radar on a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle. It's a useful little device. You get, for up to 20 targets, range, range rate, and azimuth. Targets smaller than a motorcycle usually do not show up. It will not see pedestrians at any useful range. Azimuth info accuracy isn't very good, but range and range rate are quite good. That's ten year old technology; the newer units are better. Those units have been on some big trucks for fifteen years. But the technology was too expensive for most cars. It's been appearing as "intelligent cruise control" on some cars for years.
The Eaton units, with the display and controller used for vehicles, supports accident reconstruction. The last 15 seconds are retained, and you can see what other vehicles in front were doing. Trucking companies find this useful, because they often can show that it was the other driver's fault.
...called "eyes" to let me know if I'm too close to other cars. Any they're open source too, in a manner of speaking...
For values of "based" near to zero.
This is just marketing to make feel the buyer like Maverick in the danger zone. OTOH I guess it is just what a large segment of American consumers want. The closer the car is to a military vehicle, the better.
What I want to know is - did they incorporate the F22 fire-control systems? It's getting increasingly difficult to line up a Sidewinder shot on the tailpipe of the idiot car ahead of you. Hybrids and EVs will only make that worse - going to have to switch to fully radar-guided missles, and the current Ford package just won't handle it.
(and you think YOU have a tough commute...:-)
Do you really think tailgate asses do it because they are late?
They do it because it's what they like. I heard it's the only way they can get an erection.
BLINKENLIGHTS! MORE BLINKENLIGHTS!
Too lazy to read your own article?
That research was done with a model featuring .... pedestrians. Rarely seen those doing 120 kph.
Even better, quoting the last few alineas:
"However, there is one rule you shouldn't break, according to a new analysis of how high-volume traffic flows along a highway. Cecile Appert-Rolland, a physicist at the University of Paris-Sud, looked at the tailing distances between cars traveling on a busy two-lane expressway in the suburbs of Paris."
Her research showed that tailgating drivers were more likely than a non-tailgater to have a car in the lane next to them, so they weren't just speeding up in order to change lanes. She also found that these short time headways tended to extend across several vehicles, creating a platoon.
"We can identify at least seven or eight cars where they have time headways of half a second," she said. Considering that a driver's reaction time is about one second, these platoons are disastrous pileups waiting to happen. "If the first one brakes, the second one has to brake harder, the third one even harder, and the last wouldn't be able to brake hard enough."
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Chronic tailgaters are either going to turn it off, or ignore it, or maybe yell back at it. What makes anyone think they're going to respect it? They already fire back at the warning signs they currently get -- the finger and the brake light.
I sort of understand tailgating someone going too slow who could move over into a more appropriate lane. What is the point of tailgating someone who has nowhere to go?
Admittedly this system might help when SoccerMom is distracted by the kids in back at exactly the moment traffic grinds to a halt ahead of her.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
"The Taurus 2010 will average 17mpg in the city and 25mpg on the motorway, on a par with the competition"
WTF? I've had two Tauruses, and both had 3L V6 motors with automatic, air, cruise, etc. My average with the 1986 model was about 32 mpg for mostly city/suburban driving. With the 1997 model, it was a bit worse, about 29 mpg. BTW, these are imperial gallons, but multiplying by 0.833 to convert to US gallons still gives 24-26 mpg for city/suburban driving. On long trips by highway, the 1986 model could average 45-50 mpg (around 37-41 mpg/US).
Admittedly, it's not a compact car, but what exactly have the marketing geniuses done to ruin its fuel economy like that? Mere engineers could not have accomplished it unaided.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
What a stupid concept. Put down the cell phone, stop playing with the MP3 player and drive the d**m car.
"We can identify at least seven or eight cars where they have time headways of half a second," she said. Considering that a driver's reaction time is about one second, these platoons are disastrous pileups waiting to happen. "If the first one brakes, the second one has to brake harder, the third one even harder, and the last wouldn't be able to brake hard enough."
Which is why I laugh every time I see morons on the highway doing that. At least once every couple of months I see a 5 car pileup because there's a string of cars doing 75 - 80 mph and riding an inch off the bumper in front of them. When cops are called out in events like that, everyone but the car in front (who obviously wasn't tailgating) should be shot on the side of the road. THAT would stop tailgaters pretty damn quick.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The Pentagon sure relaxed their tech transfer restrictions.
Unfortunately Toyota announced immediately afterwards, that they are incorporating F-35 stealth technology in the 2010 Camry sedan ... one hand giveth, the other taketh away...
I think in reality this will be more of a teaching tool than an immediate safety mechanism. It's not about being "alert." It's about not even being aware that they're doing something dangerous. There are just too many people out on the road that don't even understand the consequences of tailgating. It happens to me all the time. I usually travel in the slow lanes (going the speed limit) and usually someone will roll up behind me leaving less than a second's distance between our bumpers, all the while there is plenty of room to pass me in the other lanes.
People are just generally dense about driving. They don't take it seriously. They don't think they're in control of a deadly piece of machinery. Top it all off with the modern notion that the car is the 21st century telephone booth and it's disaster waiting to happen.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
this sounds like something which might have been used in any one of the DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles and we know a good number of those were open source and a few were even Linux based. So, maybe Ford got the basic ideas, design and code from there and tweaked it to work on the highway.
It is pleasing to see them publishing that it came from an open source design.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
He chose a bad study its distracted and or slow drivers not speeders that cause delays. http://jalopnik.com/5352906/helpful-holiday-traffic-graphic-why-highways-come-to-a-halt
I hope the dev for the app has a sense of humour, so that if the system detects the crash is unavoidable, it print out a big red 'you're fucked now' image on the window.
"Admittedly this system might help when SoccerMom is distracted by the kids in back at exactly the moment traffic grinds to a halt ahead of her."
Or, when someone falls asleep at the wheel, and the alarm wakes them, possibly, in time to deal with the problem instead of crashing.
Maybe you're looking in the rear-view mirror for an opening to change langes, and someone just happens to change lanes in front of you at that exact moment, cutting off the assured distance you *used* to have (granted, peripheral vision *usually* catches things like that, but I suppose a little chime to catch your attention might not hurt).
Although, I do think you make a good point. My fear is that, adding these extra 'safety' features will put people at a false sense of greater security, and so they will tailgate more, do more distracting things like texting on cell phones, or whatever, because they figure the tech will save their asses, instead of being as vigilant as possible with respect to the road and other vehicles around them, and ultimately end up in situations where the alarm goes off, but it's too late because their very human reaction times are too slow to break soon enough.
On that note, it seems like one of the car companies, recently, has been advertising a car with a similar radar or sonar system, but instead of just flashing warning lights, it'll automatically activate the brakes? Again, not sure it's a great idea, but probably more useful than just an alarm.
>Hell with that. Can they invent a car that pulls over, stops, kills the engine, and locks the wheels/transmission and ignition for 15 minutes when the driver gets too close to another car?
I certainly hope so, you should be the first person they use it on, you old biddy.
Lord.
I get a little better gas mileage in real life than the sticker said on every car I've driven. I drive faster than the speed limit and am no shrinking violet pulling away from a stop. But my dad taught me about conservation of momentum and not wasting your gas and brake pads. I've been practicing some of the principles of hypermiling for 15 years, long before I new there was a name for it.
I have it in every car I drive.
Fully automated front-view distance estimation with warning system for when I am too close, and a reactive system to being the car to a halt in an emergency. It even has the ability to activate the hazard lights when appropriate
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
love the tech, but this is ford. They havent proven in the last 25 years they can do anything with their cars but leverage lobbyists to ensure a market monopoly, noncompliance to regulations and a guaranteed blank check to disregard my safety. bigger engines, bigger vehicles and louder stereos have been their order of the day for innovation if i recall correctly (the ford excursion anyone?) while the taurus, the one in the article, hasnt even bothered to change its outdated green console clock in well over 12 years. and just now it gets supersonic fighter jet radar!? "ford innovation" is an oxymoron to me
Raptor radar isnt going to help much if the car breaks down after 40000 miles, except maybe identify the towtruck that sends the thing back to the dealer. Honda and Toyota arguably have more expertise in radar systems (ex: a car that parks itself) so whats my incentive to try the new guy other than "their technology to keep me safe is also used by my military industrial complex to kill brown people."
again, I dont know about the average american ford customer, but when my parents helped me get a car for college i didnt get a brand new one. i drove a 1992 toyota klunker sans the special keys.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It'll drive people crazy. Driving is a controlled crash. Sqreater
E Proelio Veritas.
is probably a way to avoid liability if it ends up causing an accident. "Your honor, it wasn't our technology, it was the linux geeks who wrote the software that caused the crash."
I suspect they may not actually give you the source code (but someone correct me if I'm wrong). Most likely, they are using BSD-licensed software somewhere in there. If that's the case, it's not very useful. Microsoft Windows uses plenty of BSD-licensed code as well.
"It's open source--you just can't get the source."
"It's open source (which means that if it doesn't work, we can point the finger at someone else)."
"All the buzzword compliance of open source without the many pesky braces and semicolons."
mu is not a constant.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
When can I get missiles on my Taurus?
Perhaps there should be unmarked trucks with rear-facing radars, that slam on the brakes when they detect tailgating.
Nullius in verba
I would say that the vast majority of accidents are caused by a combination of the following:
- Not paying attention to driving / not paying attention to cars around you.
- Drivers doing things that other drivers don't expect.
OR (!) why don't stop being a retard and get out of the way. Left lane is for passing. If you're not going faster than the right lane you belong there.
If you crash into the speeding idiot when he/she brakes out of the blue, that means it's your fault : You shouldn't have driven so close.
Always keep a safety distance, for fuck's sake.
Because next time, the driver in front of you might not be braking because of radar got detected.
The driver might be braking to avoid bumping some poor pedestrian.
Disclaimer:
Well, ok. I live in Europe. Most of the time I drive in populated area. Therefor, a driver suddenly braking of the blue is something that can happen - usually because he/she saw a ball rolling on the street, and quickly hit the brakes before the inevitable kid that would come running after the ball any time soon.
So maybe I'm more biased toward keeping a safety distance, than people leaving in regions were you can drive for half an hour without encountering anything but other cars.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]