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IBM's Patent-Pending Traffic Lights Stop Car Engines
theodp writes "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let your engine idle. The USPTO has just published IBM's patent application for a 'System and Method for Controlling Vehicle Engine Running State at Busy Intersections for Increased Fuel Consumption Efficiency.' Here's how Big Blue explains the invention: 'The present disclosure is directed to a method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal. The method may comprise establishing communications with participating vehicles; responding to a stop status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: receiving a position data from each participating vehicles; determining a queue of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal; determining a remaining duration of the stop status; sending a stop-engine notification to the list of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal when the remaining duration is greater than a threshold of time; responding to a proceed status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: sending a start-engine notification to a first vehicle in the queue; calculating an optimal time for an engine of a second vehicle in the queue to start; and sending the start-engine notification to the second vehicle at the optimal time.' IBM notes that 'traffic signals may include, but are not limited to, traffic lights at intersections, railway crossing signals, or other devices for indicating correct moments to stop and to proceed.'"
Hmmm, a computer at a railway crossing that can remotely disable a car's engine. To use the parlance of our times "What could possibly go wrong?"
This patent would be much less necessary if cities would install intelligent traffic lights that allowed traffic to flow and thus minimized idling engines.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I've never perceived the problem of getting vehicles to turn off engines at traffic lights as being a technical issue. Rather, the problem is much more one of regulation, and forcing everyone to adopt a standard. To make the strategy work, you need to:
(a) get every state in the union, and perhaps every municipality in every state, to modify their traffic lights in the same way, and
(b) get every automaker to make cars that with electronic modules that work with the *SAME* standard as the traffic lights, and
(c) get every class action litigator to agree to not sue anyone.
Business text books clearly say to "run away" from any system that requires broad corporate/public/governmental agreement, particularly if the system involves long-term governmental and corporate cooperation.
The problem is the damn headline, that makes the idea sound Orwellian. It isn't. It's not about disabling your engine, or some other DRM-style idea. It's about giving your car additional information that it can choose to use to increase fuel efficiency.
Are you familiar with the idea of correlated equilibrium from game theory? By giving players a common instruction, which they can choose either to follow or to disobey, you can often get better Nash equilibria than if you simply made the players decide what to do independently. That's what this is -- applied to engine management.
Anyone want to take bets on how long until the protocols gets hacked and spoofed?
This should be a good thread on comp.risks.
Some of this is an issue of reliability and having an engine designed for multiple restarts. For at least older gasoline vehicles, starting an engine can cause hell on the internal wear of engine parts and is generally discouraged on a practical dollars and cents level as you will be paying far more in engine repair bills than the little bit of money that you save for turning off an engine. Even if you are a backyard mechanic and figuring in the cost of the replacement parts alone, it can get quite expensive. If you factor in the environmental factors for metal refinement used to make these parts and shipping those parts across the country to get them to you, it could be argued that turning off engines actually does more harm to the environment and perhaps even more carbon pollution than simply keeping the engine running.... at least if the time you keep the engine off is but a short period of time. The rule of thumb I've heard is you start to save money if you are going to be stopped for more than a few minutes... that is not the amount of time people are typically at an intersection waiting for a street light.
The point being that you need a vehicle designed explicitly for being turned off and restarted on a whim and have that happen repeatedly during a typical driving experience.
BTW, part of the patent here is that it specifically addresses the above issue I mention, where the manufacturer puts into is electronic control system some sort of calculation for how long an engine ought to be kept on before wear and tear on the engine from restart begins to do some damage, and if the traffic signals "intelligently" indicate that the wait time is going to be longer than that predetermined time period, that the engine shuts off while the car is already stopped anyway. It is an interesting solution to the issue, but I'm not really sure how "non-obvious" that concept really is if the goal is to engage in saving fuel in this manner. A competent automotive engineer would have responded to the same engineering goals with at least that same sort of solution.... which to me makes the idea not patentable. Of course who ever said that the USPTO ever made sense on what they considered for a patent.
I had the same thought - he's probably not saving fuel by turning off the ignition at a stop light. But, I didn't want to commit to actually TELLING HIM that he's wasting fuel. Just maybe, some manufacturer has come up with a more fuel efficient method of restarting a hot engine or something.
But, yes, in most vehicles, it is going to take more fuel to restart the engine than to just wait for the traffic light. Someone told me once what the break-even point was, but I don't really remember. 3 minutes? Maybe a bit less. It probably varies for different size engines, and different idle speeds - in fact, it's probably different between automatic and manual vehicles.
Personally, I'm not about to turn off an engine unless I KNOW that I'm stuck for 5 minutes or more.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The ability to turn cars on and off at their whim.
How long until one hacks into the system and just turns them all off?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.