Earlier this week I got a chance to ride along on the road trip of the future. It wasn't in a crazy concept vehicle, but rather in a pair of pre-production, Euro-spec Ford Fiestas. And even though the trip had all the trappings of several days on the road -- empty soda bottles in the cup holders, bags of Sour Patch candies, stories about accidents and incidents along the way -- the purpose was not just to get from Point A to Point B, but to show how "cloud computing" apps Ford is developing can make highway journeys easier and more fun.
I joined the last leg of what was a week-long road trip from Ann Arbor, Michigan to the Maker Faire DIY geek fest in San Mateo, California this weekend, or what Ford billed as American Journey 2.0. In one Fiesta was a pair of Ford engineers and in the other was a trio of recent University of Michigan graduates who developed an app called Caravan, which won a contest that Ford sponsored at U of M -- and got the grads on the road to California.
The car with Ford engineers T.J. Guili and Joe Ross was dubbed AJtheFiesta, and it had its own Twitter feed, which let people not only follow the journey, but also allowed the car to tweet about the trip. Using different data inputs, the car could send out tweets on how it was "feeling" at any point during the trip as well as report on local conditions, such as whether it was raining or if the road was fun to drive. Silly, yes. But when you consider that people have been assigning human names and attributes to their cars for years, it's not such a stretch.
The engineers showed how they came up with a grid to map out the car's current "feelings," and they used feeds from Yahoo! Weather and other sources to generate real-time tweets. They also explained how it would be possible to tap data points on the car -- from rain-sensing wipers to fuel economy -- to send out info. And cameras facing out the windshield and back window and into the car could snap pictures and upload them. AJtheFiesta also automatically checked in on the app foursquare when it arrived at a location.
The blue U of M Fiesta showcased the Caravan app that students Collin Hockey, Joe Phillips, Sangmi Park and John Ciccone developed. If you've ever been on a road trip with several cars you know how hard it can be to keep everyone together and on course. There's always mobile phones and walkie-talkies, of course, and the Caravan app does use a cellular network for communication. But instead of calling or texting, the Caravan app uploads the data to the "cloud" (aka a server) so that it can be shared between the cars.
The Caravan app incorporates mapping, navigation and location awareness so that all cars involved can keep track of each other; for example, an icon for each car appears on a map screen. It also allows sending short, predetermined message back and forth, such as "I need gas" or "Road hazard ahead" and custom messages can also be generated. Other features include using Yahoo! Local Search for finding fuel and food, and capturing and displaying vehicle information such as speed and fuel levels.
Guili stressed that the technology shown on the road trip are future concepts and Ford has no immediate plans to introduce these features anytime soon. That was apparent from the DIY appearance of the large display rigged to the dash and equipment array on an unfinished plywood rack in the hatch of each Fiesta, and Guili also acknowledged that the intent was to keep the look a little rough around the edges in the spirit of Maker Faire. Plus, interface/driver distractions issues will need to be worked out before such technology is ready for the road and the driving public.
But American Journey 2.0 shows what's possible and how useful information can be sent to and from the car. And gives a glimpse of the road trip of the future.
By estreka
on May 22, 2010
05:43 AM
My friends and I used to use walkie talkies when we'd go driving. Those things saved our asses on numerous occasions.