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Ford Demonstrates Networked Cars
An anonymous reader writes "Ford is touring U.S. cities demonstrating a technology that appears to closely resemble a private dynamic network among multiple cars. The cars connect to each other via short-range Wi-Fi (which actually has a reach of half a mile) and enables vehicles to exchange location and movement data. Being aware of each other's location and movement direction enables them to help drivers avoid collisions, especially in situations where obstacles cannot be identified fast enough. The technology could be available for consumers as soon as 2013."
Will we be able to use this to be aware of police within a half mile radius?
the other car will either ram the first, or will drive off the road into a bridge.
Just no.
This is so many bad exploitable ideas in one place it can NOT be allowed to happen. Until humans and our goverments and companies are a lot better, honest, and trustworthy. And that's just so far out of reach right now...
Just no.
BRING BACK THE VIC! Damn Ford, discontinuing the best car ever made.
Avoid collisions becomes "create collisions"??
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
That management center would then help you avoid a traffic jam by sending traffic information to your car via a cellular signal. However, such a system is even further out in the future and it is unclear who would even pay for the technology. Consider the fact that Ford says that the combined technology could reduce gasoline consumption by 4 billion gallons a year, which could cost the government upwards of $1 billion in tax revenue. Would or could the government pay for such a system? I doubt it.
Odd reasoning. For one thing, GPS systems already can do this. For another, "Could the government pay" for the tax cut? Since we're talking about politics, that doesn't make sense. Taxes get cut if the politicians can sell it, not because of silly things like numbers, or because tax revenue is higher than spending.
Silly journalists...
Avoiding traffic jams and saving money is is great! But how about creating convoys for long drives? IT would be nice to hook up to a network of cars going from City A to City B and go driverless and maybe be able to drag - yeah, I know the lead car will take a huge hit in miles/km per gallon/liter but still, you see where I'm going.
Good grief, along I-20 from Atlanta to Myrtle Beach could use that during the Summer - or even Birmingham to Myrtle Beach!
This will make the next GTA "the weird one"
range may be to long
and overload
on the wifi
on the cpu
on the software.
may happen in a area with a lot of cars
also how will older non wifi cars work with the new wifi ones.
I'd be very interested to see this used for some kind of mesh networking. I suspect it'd be way cheaper to equip every car on the road with some kind of repeater, than it would be to build out a nationwide set of cell towers. Assuming they could address the security (some kind of encrypted tunnelling, maybe), it could be a way for a smaller operator to get into the ISP business.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
FWIW, services like On-Star are already starting to use some of these concepts, just not between moving vehicles.
I can think of several ideas for uses besides "safety."
For instance, LEO's could have a sort of "Pied Piper" setting that overrides the computer in a perp's car and forces it to lockdown and follow them.
The heck with hacking, does this mean we're going to equip deer with WiFi, and fine children who ride near the street on tricycles that aren't equipped?
Cooperative communication can be used for things like platooning and adaptive cruise control, but it has to be augmented by enough situational awareness to understand what's happening without cooperation. So the "safety" thing doesn't make any sense to me: If you're depending on inter-vehicle communication for safety, all it takes is an unequipped roadway participant, or a failed transceiver, to create a dangerous situation.
see the stupid Batmobile story below.
Yours In Moscow,
K. Trout.
Why are we waiting for Ford to build these kinds of systems?
What do you need? A radio? A computer? A display?
Sounds like an android app. Then I can use it in any car.
The one thing I worry about is people becoming reliant on the technology to warn them of danger and becoming less observant. Sort of like when my brother couldn't figure out which way was West until the GPS told him despite many very obvious indicators (mountains, sun, etc.).
The only quesiton I have: Do the bitcoins mined by the distrubuted processing system belong to me or Ford?
Hackin' and Jackin' is here!!!
There are several cars on my street that have wi-fi. Whenever they go buy, it impacts the signal. now it's just a couple of cars, but what about when its 30 cars, most of which will be on the same channel? Or hundreds of cars going buy n the free way?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Honest officer! My car is infected with malware and it told it to speed down the road at 95 miles per hour!"
http://www.its.dot.gov/connected_vehicle/connected_vehicle.htm I can't possibly add more info than the government is already putting out on this subject and we need to let the government know this is ridiculous. It was formerly known as Intellidive but the US DOT is moving forward on funding a road system and cars that will eventually take over when they believe a crash is imminent, or I assume any other reason the government believes you should (or shouldn't) stop. This should scare the shit out of you coming from the same government that decided they would just start listening to all our calls. Not to mention they are calling this a green initiative, so are you ready for the road to decide you're going too fast and slow you down without your help to save gas? Ready to have insurance hiked for not driving a car that can be overridden by the roadway itself?
will bring a whole new meaning to the word 'wardriving'.
If you're depending on inter-vehicle communication for safety, all it takes is an unequipped roadway participant, or a failed transceiver, to create a dangerous situation.
Yes; except that computer vision is finally reaching the point of usefulness - because the computer chips are finally reaching a significant fraction of the brainpower of a typical animal - so you can simply divide the world to objects that are responding and those that aren't, and use some basic avoidance ruleset for the latter - while telling everyone else you are, and that there is a potential danger here, and so on.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
What, nobody quoted this yet ? "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" Mix in some Johnny Mnemonic data courier services, P2P Mesh Networking, Onion Routing, Geotagging and presto, the Diamond Age "MediaNet" is here ! IPV6 Ptooey, Who needs it in a world with Traffic Lights and Ford Transport Protocols ? ;)
Finally, a way to make all the other cars around me listen to my playlist!
"... and you are exceeding the posted speed on this highway. Your vehicle ID has been logged, and your vehicle is now being rerouted to McDonalds indicated here, "where America is lovin' it", and you will be served with a notice of infraction as well as a discount on a cup of McCoffee (limit one per violator)."
The US DOT Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Program has been going on for a very long time. It's taken at least half a decade just to get to the point where there are some practical standards.
http://www.its.dot.gov/factsheets/v2v_factsheet.htm
It's not your average basement-dwelling Slashdotter's Wi-Fi - this is 802.11p in the 5.9GHz band, the work for which was only completed last year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11p
Will be licensed restricted access, between vehicles and roadside infrastructure like talking signs and signposts, warning devices, all that happy stuff. Perhaps using multihop, traffic jams and accident scenes could get propagated out to allow motorists to recompute route before becoming mired. No one has figured out how to pay for it or what it will really do. At least in the past, there was talk about commercial organizations subsidizing the infrastructure in return for being able to advertise their service/location on the vehicle's nav system.
Based on the scathing reviews of My Touch and Synch, I'd suggest Ford stick to just making cars and leaving the tech to somebody else.
I had this idea many years ago, but only for car-to-car communications.. some kind of short range WiFi, text and voice communication between cars. I think it would be kind of cool, like having a CB radio, but geekier.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
When I learned to drive, I was told that a fundamental principle was not to exceed a speed at which you could comfortable stop in the distance you can see is clear.
When did that go out the winddow?
Thoughts on how this works?
This is actually a part of CVIS (cooperative vehicle infrastructure systems) project http://www.cvisproject.org/ for at least 6+ years. Currently CVIS is a part of ITS WC group The demo mentioned in the article was already demonstrated many-many times before in numerous European cities starting from late 2008/early 2009, but since it was mostly research organizations performing these demonstrations, it didn't generate sufficient publicity to attract /.
Sheriff Carter has seen this destruction and would not approve.
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APK