Planning your ride: the networked car of the future   |  January 26, 2009  

A Toronto meeting of auto and tech big wigs sets the stage for the networked car of the future

By Mathieu Yuill

You’ve just dropped your children off at school and it starts to rain. Not a big deal because your windshield wipers automatically kick in. They’re synched to the national weather service and a local relay station has told them exactly how much rain is going to fall in the next 20 minutes, so they’re ready to go.

But the rain has been falling hard up ahead and an accident has blocked two lanes on the highway. No worries, other cars along the route you normally take have been feeding updates to your car on road conditions and traffic, and your GPS has already mapped out an alternate route. As a bonus, it’s also found the gas station with the cheapest price along the way and—responding to an e-mail from your partner at home—the grocery store next to the gas station has already put items aside for pick up.

Sound good? Some of that scenario is available now—rain-sensing windshield wipers and GPS units that receive traffic reports—but the rest is still a little way off. However, a Toronto-based group is working to bring that vision closer.

While our lives have become pimped out with cellphones, Twitter, GPS and TiVos, the car remains a bastion of network isolation. In response, the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) held a workshop in Toronto that gathered Canadian and American academics and executives from the private and public sectors. The goal: visualize the innovation of the next generation of networked vehicles.

“This forum has triggered the creation of four new expert workshops that are crafting components for the evolution of the networked vehicle,” said Barry Gander, executive vice-president of CATA. Those gatherings are planned for the spring of 2009. “We now have an appropriate outline to formally organize and develop the technologies and business models that will help bring the networked vehicle closer to reality.”

The four planned workshops are: standardization, mobile enhancement, social networks and auto cloud computing. Representatives from IBM, Cisco, Intel and HP, respectively, will lead each group.


That first Toronto meeting set six specific focus areas for the next set of meetings.

1 Access to social networks. At home you have broadband ’net access to your social networking friends and colleagues, and the plan is to offer much of that behind the wheel. This includes something as simple as accessing phone numbers listed on social networking sites or connecting to your child’s GPS-enabled phone to lead you to his/her location.

Think about the last time you agreed to meet someone after a game or at the mall. Wouldn’t it have been great if instead of navigating a busy parking lot you could have waited on the outskirts and had your friend find the exact location of your car using only a handheld computer?

2 Vehicle efficiencies and navigation services. Networked vehicles would not only monitor slowdowns and gas prices, they would also perform vehicle diagnostics and keep you updated on any issues.

However, that little red engine light already does that. What makes the networked vehicle special is it will also lead you to a garage that specializes in that particular problem and even make the appointment for you. Better still, if it’s a simple matter of tuning the software, the car will simply download the update automatically.

In addition, GPS technology will get far more detailed, suggesting alternative routes based on the grade of the road in relation to potential fuel efficiencies. In combination with accessing Web services, your GPS will accurately calculate when you’ll need to leave your house in order to make the late show and will take into consideration weather conditions, time of day and even the schedule of traffic lights.

3 Cloud computing functionality. “If you think of vehicles on the road today, they are like a whole bunch of marbles being dumped onto a table; they’ll go anywhere,” Gander said. “Cloud computing, as it relates to the automobile, will take all those marbles and put them on a string, so when they are dumped onto the table, they don’t just scatter—they are connected.”

This area will combine GPS and cloud computing to work on both routing and fuel efficiency. As millions of people hit the road every day, networked vehicles will interact with others on the same routes, setting up carpooling opportunities or physically aligning themselves on the road to form an actual caravan. “This would allow the cars and vans to be going 200km/hr with only 10 feet between them, without any danger,” Gander said.

4 IP-connected cars. Assigning an Internet Protocol to your car will enable much of the functionality CATA is suggesting. When an IP address travels with you, e-mail and instant messages find your car, not just your handheld or laptop. For example, Gander said, imagine a family going out to dinner. “The kids might be downstairs watching TV and they’re probably going to be right in the middle of a program. Being able to bring your IP with you will allow that television show to be streamed directly into your vehicle seamlessly.”

There also won’t be any complicated set-up process each time you change location. Going down the street for milk will be the same as taking a cross-country family vacation as far as your ability to be networked is concerned.

Current attempts to mobilize your home music collection mostly involve a static solution: carrying an iPod to the car temporarily relocates your iTunes collection, for example. IP addresses, instead, will be like a key, allowing access to your content regardless of where you are.

5 Security issues. Portable IP addresses can lead to security issues, and CATA understands that networked vehicles won’t really take off until encryption and data security are in place. It’s not as sexy as streaming video from your home PVR to the backseat or using GPS to locate your family, but security is important on two levels.

The first is that the security has to be robust, as CATA’s vision includes the transmission of a great deal of personal information. The second aspect is physical, as opposed to virtual. GM’s OnStar service, for example, offers a glimpse of what a true networked vehicle could do. Currently, if the airbags are deployed an OnStar representative contacts the driver through the vehicle’s interface. In an emergency, OnStar then contacts a dispatcher in the appropriate locale and the proper authorities are alerted. But a networked vehicle could instantly contact the closest police cruiser in the event of an accident or break-in.

6 Telemetric connections for health care. Imagine this: a monitor in your seat belt keeps a close watch on your heart and blood pressure. In an emergency—such as a heart attack behind the wheel—the closest ambulance is alerted and your vitals are sent to their in-vehicle screen. An “Is there a doctor in the house” alert is also sent to all nearby vehicles driven by doctors who have agreed to form a sort of mobile neighbourhood watch. While one of these doctors assists you, the closest hospital is also alerted.

On a larger scale, such monitoring would provide instant information to emergency services in the event of a big accident. Think of an avalanche in the mountains. Police and rescue workers would immediately know how many cars were involved and how many people were in those vehicles, plus the specific location and condition of each person.

So, when will we see all this? While some car companies are already sitting “at the table,” CATA has mostly been working with its technology members and partners. “We want to bring something to the auto manufacturers,” Gander said. “We need the infrastructure to exist before it can appear in automobiles.”

One required element is computers that monitor and analyze traffic. These exist in certain specific areas but not as a robust and complete system.

Overall, many of these ideas aren’t new, they’ve just been waiting for the right enabling networks and systems. CATA believes these networks are just coming into their own and some of this networked-vehicle functionality will become available as soon as spring 2009.



SIDEBAR

But what about safety?
As discussed in our November/December issue, the more non-driving related functions that are crammed into vehicles, the greater the concern that drivers will become dangerously distracted.

So what about networked cars? Barry Gander of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance said networked vehicles will actually be safer for drivers and for others on the road. “Some vehicles already have a sonar system built right into them (that will detect objects and work to avoid them), but where networking will come into play is if you have to stop suddenly, all the cars behind you for a few kilometers will be notified and take action to either stop or avoid a collision,” he said.

He also said telemetric systems will monitor the driver’s eye movement and physical characteristics to detect if he/she is falling asleep. In that case an alarm will sound to awaken the person.

But, he added, the onus will always be on drivers to ensure they are driving safely.


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