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The Future of In-Car Computing
Barence writes "PC Pro is running a collection of articles looking at the future of in-car computing technology. They discuss how smartphones will become the primary means of in-car entertainment, how satnavs will be integrated into fighter-jet style heads-up displays, and how cars will create wireless mesh networks that warn each other of upcoming delays and collisions. The also explore the issue of integrating driverless cars onto the roads. 'It's one thing having smart cars that can talk to each other and react accordingly, but if half of the cars are dumb, it's another issue.'"
So they are building in a "collision detection system" that I can hack and get the car next to me to drive off the road. Cool.
I rather like the idea of "dumb cars" being a factor now, because it means that when the "smart cars" or their users fail to be quite so smart, the cars around them can react without being able to communicate with them. It would be quite dangerous if they all operated on the assumption that every vehicle on the road was talking to them.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
That was my sarcastic heading for the thought that immediately came to mind.
A Slashdot article on the first multi-lane triple-digit pileup involving emergency organ transplant couriers, a schoolbus full of nuns and orphaned AIDS children, an emergency response vehicle going in the opposite direction and a dozen container cargoes of inflatable Jesus sex dolls, all caused by a conflict between the rights infringement seeking subroutines of the vehicles' in-car computing technologies.
Then someone will try to be first to post a 'Crash' joke.
They discuss how smartphones will become the primary means of in-car entertainment, how satnavs will be integrated into fighter-jet style heads-up displays, and how cars will create wireless mesh networks that warn each other of upcoming delays and collisions.
I think smartphones will be a stop-gap entertainment-wise. Really, if the new cars will have wifi anyway they will just talk to your home network (when parked) and just download the entertainment to the onboard HDD. The heads-up satnav will be pretty cool, although I suspect that the mesh networking will require multiple driver inputs of a collision and the like instead of relying on sensors alone.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
That is not a tech problem, that is a driving problem. STOP FUCKING TAILGATING.
After just having seen what information the iPhone stores without the users knowledge I don't want to know how much more information the future smartcar wants to store and give away to different companies and lawenforcement agencies. No thanks.
My '03 Pontiac has a heads-up display that shows my speed, and radio station briefly when I change stations. I went looking at new cars last year and didn't find a lot of models with the heads-up display. It's a great idea, and the technology has been available for at least 8 years, why isn't it as common as cruise control and interval wipers?
Mass transit or whatnot is clearly superior to an infinite number of monkeys driving cars at the same time.
On paper that seems correct... until you find yourself waiting in a queue with those monkey's to get onto a train/bus/subway which is already full of those monkeys and piloted by a monkey (or a computer programmed by monkeys)... suddenly you find yourself saying, I'd rather sit in traffic for an hour then next to these monkeys.
We had this same problem in the 1950s and 60s... of course back then not EVERYONE drove like an idiot, so it wasn't so bad.
Mass transit or whatnot is clearly superior to an infinite number of monkeys driving cars at the same time.
Uh, no.
Mass transit sucks and always will so long as I have to go from where I don't want to start to where I don't want to get to at a time when I don't want to go and share it with people I don't want to sit next to.
The ideal would be a vehicle that would just carry me, and go from where I am at a time of my choosing to the destination of my choosing without stopping at numerous places along the way.
Oh, but we already have that. It's called a car.
My car has a standard 1/8" plug for an external player to use the stereo but my wife's car came with an ipod socket which is useless as we don't have any ithings. I imagine the pressure on the car makers to include car stereos locking in to one or another proprietary format (probably the ipod type; I think I was lucky) and the consumer being really stuck.
Well someone had to do it. Suppose a segfault would be just as bad.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Without a complete re-engineering, car MPG isn't going to be increasing. Nor, with traffic as congested as it is, does horsepower mattered as it used to.
So, what is left is making the ride more comfortable and safer. Because smaller modes of transportation are becoming more common (motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, pedicabs), vehicles that have the ability to warn about stuff in blind spots are becoming more important, especially modern cars where visibility is impaired by the pillars airbags are stashed in.
Of course, a safe driver is a safe driver, but having a warning system so Jane Xanax who is on the cellphone and putting on makeup gets buzzed that if she is about to turn a motorcyclist into an organ donor, or that the beer tap on Joe Sixpack's dash cuts him off after four servings of Miller Light, before his BAC gets to the legal limit.
I am all for automatic driving cars that use a mesh network. This means freeways that can run at the max speed of the slowest vehicle, not the minimum speed of the most drunk, stoned, high, baked, moron on a cellphone. Taking the human equation out on the freeways is a good thing, as it allows for much higher vehicle density as opposed to having to deal with people's reaction times (or lack thereof).
...16-year-old girls everywhere driving around with Facebook on the heads-up display. You might as well install a keg in the trunk with the tap in the dash for all this will do to teen accident rates.
No we don't. That damn thing requires someone to pay attention, and not drink. Totally unacceptable.
Such hacks are easily defeated by proper architecture. Most likely, automatic cars will have several levels of functions with firewalls between them. For example:
1) Low level - engine control.
2) Situational awareness - do not accelerate into pedestrians.
3) Global awareness - traffic patterns and navigation.
So hackers will only be able to influence the last level of the hierarchy. So they can route your car into an incorrect location, but they won't be able to drive it off the road.
This?
Learn to love Alaska
Talking on cell phones while driving
Texting while driving
Watching vids while driving
Yes, that means you. And if the car is turned on and in a roadway, that counts, no matter what your excuse is.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I also foresee when cars will link to the one in front like a train. That will form a direct connection for communication, turning it into a longer car. Why that? Because the economy will improve with the proximity of the cars and the carrying capacity of the road will increase dramatically. As long as they get the linking to be a safe thing, safety should be improved because the chains will "think" as one and when it's your turn to get off, you disconnect and exit, back to regular car mode. And the others close up and continue on to their exit.
But I personally think that GSM GPS should be in all cars with all trips taken transmitted back to a central node. That node can look at actual traffic in real-time and route people based on the best way to get there. It could also take into account individual driving patters to give appropriate directions (give grandma a route with lower speeds because she drives slow) and the ability to modify routes in real-time for congestion and problems would greatly help. Timing lights based on cars approaching it, rather than poorly timed based on a 3-year old study, handling onramp metering with actual intelligence, rather than time of day, suggesting longer routes that will take less time because of avoiding congestion, and such will make such a system instantly increase the capacity of the roads and decrease fatalities.
Of course, it wouldn't be cheap, and piles of people would come out of the woodwork demanding their Constitutional Right to drive inefficiently...
Learn to love Alaska
Mass transit or whatnot is clearly superior to an infinite number of monkeys driving cars at the same time.
Only in the subset of transport where you have a lot of people who all need to go from the same place, to the same place (or at least, places along the same route), and all at the same time.
I can't use public transport, because it doesn't go where I want, from where I want, when I want, and I can't carry a tonne of tools with me. If I can't do that, then your public transport systems stop working rather quickly.
Please no.
1. Fighter Pilots are trained to read their HUDs, and also trained (presumably) in how to ignore them when appropriate.
2. Fighter jets usually don't fly in super-tight formations (Blue Angels being the exception). Especially not in tight formations of hundreds or thousands.
SatNav should be restricted to passenger or vehicle-stopped usage.
Or a vehicle that would go from where you are to a platform that will then transport you in the same vehicle close to where you want to go without you have to pay attention, and then letting you pay attention to get the same vehicle to where you want to go.
"smartphones will become the primary means of in-car entertainment" ...and soon they will run on gas, and have steering wheels.
It's always nice when pundits predict stuff that's been happening for at least 5 years already.
Instead of spending all the time, effort, and high risk should there be a failure, on an auto-pilot to handles real world situations perfectly, why not focus on the easy wins. Over long highways and busy cities, build HOV like lanes designed just for auto-pilot cars. If the car has the technology, it communicates with a gate that allows the car to enter the physically separate lane. When you get to the end of the special lane (or to your exit), you take control of the car before it lets you exit back on to the existing roads.
Include the technology for automatic valet parking that could be a seller for high end/big city areas, and you start the adoption process gradually. Even better is if the car can self-dock with a charging station while you're not using it. Companies like zipcar could purchase vehicles with the technology to get through rush-hour on the special lanes, and then the cars would reposition to high demand areas by themselves. Or the city could purchase vehicles and use them as an individual mass transit option that doesn't require building tracks, high voltage power lines, train stations, and the train cars.
For the paranoid, they don't have to give up control or even buy a car with the technology in it. But for the rest of us that would like to have our car drive at an optimal fuel efficient speed without any traffic jams while we read a book or talk on the phone, we can choose to trust the technology.
Check out Tesla's new Model S interface. It's pretty cool. Coincidentally, I interviewed with them today to work on the project. They shot me down like a bad of bricks. Tough cookies, those ones.
What is really going on is the automobile makers are announcing they have begun filing patents.
This is a continuation of the industrial patent game that has been played since the beginning of the auto industry.
The patent game is a game played between the auto companies. The payout of the game is membership and position in the global auto manufacturing hierarchy.
What kind of innovation, what software, what interface? Well the patent game allows only a spotty blend of best of breed and second best solutions.
Patents are these strange objects that confer the exclusive right to manufacture an invention for a limited period of time. For any manufacturer, patents promise guaranteed business.
I think the patent game should be changed using inspiration from the Creative Commons and Open Source and Free Software movement. The point to focus on is to require patents to be licensed on the same terms and the same price to all applicants. Equal terms for all is to address the problem of patents supporting manufacturing oligopoly and the complementary problem of the best of breed solutions being locked away for scores of years.
Another problem with the patent game is the toxic effects as patent holders grasp for extraordinary or highest possible profits. The unfortunate effect of owning a patent is to the patent holder, the only fair price is "all the market will bear". That monopoly inspired grasping is a really difficult thing to regulate or balance in respect to what is fair for the commons.
Some manufacturers already provide a collision-prevention system that slams on the breaks if it detects you are about to rear-end someone. All they need to do is modify it so that you can't get any closer than the safe stopping distance at your current speed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Mass transit works brilliantly if you are willing to walk a little at either end. On a well run system you will arrive sooner (due to avoiding traffic or simply higher speeds) and you are free to relax or work during the journey. Read a book, answer some email on your phone...
Cars on the other hand cost a lot to buy, to maintain and to fuel. You then have to drive to where you want to go, concentrating the whole time and probably getting pissed off by other road users and sitting in traffic. When you arrive you have to pay to park, often about the same distance as the bus stop or train station from where you want to be anyway.
Both options have their merits. I wouldn't give up my car, but having lived in a place where public transport is excellent (Tokyo) I prefer it to driving.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't think we understand what the OP is trying to explain to us. Perhaps if they could break it down into some kind of analogy that the community as a whole would understand...
Yes, and I'm building one from scratch myself.
I am not the AC by the way.
.. to share my car's data with everyone. Radar detector, geiger counters, WiFi scanners, everything. Everyone else can have direct access to this information, streaming, live, while they mesh with me on the road. I would love to be able to do that. Send them slip statistics pulled from ABS or traction-control triggering, how fast my windshield wipers are going, or just plain water collector sensors, airspeed (for crosswind detection in winter,) the whole kit.
I would love to be able to build a reputation system too: when I cut someone off, they can stamp me as a dangerous driver. When I let someone in, they can stamp me as a courteous driver. "Courteous driver ahead." "Jerk behind me." I can feel comfortable driving in the middle of a pack of "thumbs-up" drivers, or I can be more cautious when I'm stuck in the middle of a pack of ragers (or people who just refuse to participate, period.)