Ford has announced that research conducted jointly with Auburn University shows the promise of GPS in enhancing active safety features like stability control. According to Ford’s press release:
Researchers have found potential for a GPS satellite to act as an early warning system that detects when a vehicle is about to lose control and communicate with the vehicle’s stability control systems and other safety features to prevent a rollover or other serious accident…Virtual reality tests show that GPS satellites can precisely monitor a vehicle’s motion, which could improve the speed and effectiveness of electronic stability control systems.
Oh joy! With the government looking into GPS vehicle tracking for taxation purposes, and insurance companies pursuing GPS-dependent pay-per-mile schemes, all Big Brother needs is a good public-friendly pitch for putting GPS in every car. And who can argue with more safety? Alternatively, wouldn’t now be a good time to stand astride history and shout “thanks, but no thanks”?
Really, is it not enough that nearly every car comes with microprocessors which control stability and traction? How necessary is it to have those microprocessors in constant communication with satellites? How much safer can we be?
Most importantly, how will road testers brag about how much better a given car is with the “nannies switched off” if those nannies are only controllable with a satellite code? Thanks, but no thanks.
Oh bullshit. First they want to stick us with little 2 litre engines now this? Screw Ford and anyone who looks like them. I’m building my own car.
Hal. Open the pod bay door. Hal?
This is definitely without appeal. Not to sound strident or anything, but it would definitely be a disqualifying factor if given the choice of with or without. I hope for Ford’s sake that they wait for a government mandate before trying to sell this as a feature. I would walk away from a nicer car b/c of a system like this. It wouldn’t, however, stop me from buying cars if it was mandated…I’d probably just disable it and claim manufacturer error…repeatedly and as expensively as possible.
Also, I completely fail to see how satellite tracking could provide a more complete picture of vehicle dynamics than the systems already installed in a modern car. If the idea is reading upcoming road contours (I’m assuming they aren’t talking about using this for yaw detection, that would be stupid and redundant), wouldn’t a combination of navigation and front sensors accomplish exactly the same thing…and don’t, upscale cars at least, already come equipped with those features? This really does seem like an excuse for installing GPS in new cars.
Overall it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
In good weather and when there is no one in front, I tend to take clover leaves 10 to 20 mph faster than the warning signs reccommend. I can see Nanny bringing me back down to the posted speed because she thinks I’m going too fast for safety. Good reason never again to buy a new car.
To be fair, it doesn’t sound as if the car needs to record the GPS data or report it elsewhere for this to work– it just needs access to current GPS data and map files so that it can work out current speed, direction, etc and react to it. So this could be implemented without compromising privacy.
On the other hand, it’s true that the history of things like toll pass transponders and auto data recorders suggests that it won’t be implemented without compromising privacy.
I don’t want to insult any of this site’s fans who are probably much more knowledgable than me, but GPS satellites don’t monitor anything, they are simply a big clock in the sky, the equipment they are talking about must be capable of discerning minute altitude and distance variations on portions of the car body, the satellites merely provide the timing signals the equipment uses to establish location
This will spawn an industry dedicated to defeating such systems.
How about when the GPS nanny malfunctions with a false positive? I can see unintended braking occuring, and hence more accidents – not fewer.
My GPS thinks my car is floating off the highway every time I travel over a certain piece of country road near me. Should I expect the GPS nanny to slam on the brakes as I pass through there?!
It will also report every time you hit a fast food drive-thru to your health insurance company, your stops at the strip club to your wife…the list goes on and on.
Twotone
Sadly, these really sound like the rantings of old people. “Really, is it not enough that nearly every car comes with microprocessors which control stability and traction?”…fine, you do a better job of it then, or perhaps manage your own timing/fuel & air mixture. I just don’t think you’ve the processing power for it. Just fight technology with itself. Onstar is just one system hack away from running itself out of business. Imagine, everyone’s car suddenly stopping due to the theft deterrent system being hacked ON(those with onstar), that’s all it would take…I’m just sayin’…hackers…ENGAGE!
Twotone: Funny! And scary…
“I want to get out of the car!”
“Im sorry, but I cant do that Dave.”
Actually, this might work if all vehicles communicated with each other and satellites. You could theoretically have cars that drive themselves. Maybe this is what carmakers are striving for.
I weep for the future, because we put time, money and brainpower into crap like this and useless retro halo sports cars instead of working on the flying Jetsons car I have been promised since I was old enough to watch cartoons.
Putting aside all the Big Brother invasion-of-privacy stuff for a moment (not that I don’t worry about it, but), I don’t buy this pitch one little bit. I’ve used a handful of GPS navi devices, and every one I’ve seen has had the same lag issues. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about — the device will say you’re two or three hundred feet from your turn when it’s only a couple car-lengths ahead of you, and then even after you’ve made the turn the device still shows you driving straight for a few seconds, etc.
So what I wanna know is if GPS devices can’t even detect the fact that I’ve taken a turn until five seconds after the event, how are they supposed to instantly detect the fact that I’ve hit a patch of black ice, spun 180º, and am now travelling backwards at the same speed and in the same direction as before I spun out, and then make the necessary corrections?
I just can’t see this as anything but a load of horse ****.
What they are probably doing is using GPS aiding for the existing vehicle stability control system. It is just another input to a Kalman filter which is how most of these systems do their predicting. pariah touches on this with the lag argument and that’s why the GPS isn’t likely relied on in real time. It suggests that SCS systems get lost periodically and the filter needs to be reset.
I read things like this:
“The project’s breakthroughs include developing algorithms combining data from sensors in Ford vehicles with data from GPS receivers. This coordination of data has led to predictive models that can calculate a vehicle’s roll angle, sideslip and velocities under various driving conditions.”
…and I think “no big deal.”
But I read things like this:
“global positioning system (GPS) satellites could potentially monitor a vehicle’s motion and communicate with in-car safety systems to help prevent accidents”
…and I freak out a little. Am I being melodramatic? Road deaths per vehicle mile are at their lowest level since 1961, and the great plague of the road is people simply not paying attention to what they’re doing. Is there an app for that?
Of course not. But Ford’s in the making money business, and safety sells. Just as the insurance companies make a value pitch for pay-per-mile coverage. And the government will… wait, what’s to like about per-mile road tax?
“Road deaths per vehicle mile are at their lowest level since 1961, and the great plague of the road is people simply not paying attention to what they’re doing. Is there an app for that?”
I don’t think there’s an app for it, but the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class has a warning light on the gauge cluster to remind you that you’re driving like an idiot. :D
While visitors to this site are understandably disturbed by this possiblity, most of the women that I know, including my wife, would love to have the extra help controlling the car in treacherous conditions. Plenty of seniors approaching the point where they should stop driving would be excited as well. And many parents would rest easier knowing that their inexperienced teens had a helping hand like this.
How much safer can we be? For the less than confident and competent driver, as much as you’ve got. I just hope that the rest of us get a choice in the matter.
I agree 100% with pariah – and I have experience writing GPS Nav software. There are a lot of accuracy issues. I have a GPS log from a bicycle trip in New Hampshire that claims I exceeded 800 mph while descending a hill. Yeah, right – unless maybe I went through a micro wormhole or something. You can use accelerometers to do a bit of dead-reconing, but I wouldn’t want a GPS talking directly to the control systems in my car. Check out this link for more info:
http://earthmeasurement.com/GPS_accuracy.html
Hmmmm
Robot (attempting to disable Spooner’s car and extract him): You are experiencing a car accident.
Det. Spooner: The hell I am! Get off my car!
Why am I thinking “iRobot” about now?
Or, my Garmin’s many miscues?
Somewhere in this is something ultimately helpful…I think?
I don’t imagine they’d let the safety systems take control of the car purely based on GPS info, it is far more likely a passive type of system that lets the stability control computers pre-compute likely scenarios for the immediate future so that it can react quicker if one begins to unfold.
Autoblog ran with this story yesterday, and they also quoted high-ups from Ford stating that they have no intentions of allowing such a system to relay your location to the government or corporate interests, and that doing so would be illegal anyway.
3 acquired GPS satellites gives about 50m accuracy I think, 4 improves it to 10m, 5 to 2m (something like that). Usually you’re lucky to acquire 4 satellites I think.
Not sure what “stability” decisions you can make if your accuracy is between 2m-10m.
Also, tonto goldstein is right. GPS is a one-way, transmit to your receiver only, system.
@gslippy:
This will spawn an industry dedicated to defeating such systems.
No spawning necessary; existing industry already supplies screwdrivers and microwave ovens.
@pariah:
the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class has a warning light on the gauge cluster to remind you that you’re driving like an idiot.
If you’re in a Mercedes, such a warning light is redundant.
@NulloModo:
likely a passive type of system that lets the stability control computers pre-compute likely scenarios for the immediate future so that it can react quicker if one begins to unfold.
That is indeed the most realistic possibility for implementation. Nevertheless:
high-ups from Ford stating that they have no intentions of allowing such a system to relay your location to the government or corporate interests
…for now…
and that doing so would be illegal anyway
…at the moment.
the flying Jetsons car I have been promised since I was old enough to watch cartoons.
Every time one of my friends asks, “Where’s my flying car?” I point out to them that the vast majority of drivers are overly challenged by 2 dimensions. Why would I want them to have a third to deal with?
If it was even half as difficult to get a driver’s license here in the US as it is to get a private pilot’s license, our roads would be a lot safer. Not only would drivers be more capable, there would be a lot fewer cars on the roads.
OTOH, *I* probably wouldn’t be able to drive legally.
Just to be clear:
GPS satellites can NOT know anything about your car. They have no ability to receive data from you car or to relay data to a 3rd party (big brother or otherwise). All a GPS satellite does is transmit a very high precision clock to anyone who can hear it. If you can hear at least three of them (3 satellites), then you can get a pretty good estimate of your location by applying a bit of math (fortunately the math part is automated by your GPS receiver).
I don’t know how useful adding GPS to vehicle stability control would be, but I am 100% confident that it is completely unrelated to telling Ford / US Gov’t what your car is doing.
A system like OnStar may use GPS to know where you are, but it uses the cell phone network to communicate to the world. If you’re paranoid about this type of thing, avoid onStar & clones … but a simple GPS locator/NAV or GPS-based accelerometer won’t cause you any ills.
@ Ed (w/ lotsa respect):
“global positioning system (GPS) satellites could potentially monitor a vehicle’s motion and communicate with in-car safety systems to help prevent accidents”
— Yup they can, but they can’t communicate to anything outside of the car without a phone.
//dan.
There’s another aspect to this that’s easily missed:
the cost and complexity of all this whiz-bang stuff.
One of Augustine’s Laws of High Tech states that ‘Anything that isn’t in a design won’t break’. It won’t cost you anything either. This whole thing of more features is the result of a design department that needs to focus on basics, not on piling another layer on the Dobosh Torte. That is what has happened to Windows. Long ago, MS decided that is was easier to build and sell an Rose Bowl float of an operating system instead of one that was fast, clean and rock solid. So they keep adding more broads waving from the top of the float while underneath it all there’s just the same old overloaded chassis capable of no more than trundling in a straight line at 3 MPH. I don’t want a car like that.
A design department with ideas like this needs to get a life.
Funny that half the commentators are determined to ignore the truth -GPS satellites do NOT receive any signals from your car. GPS is just being used as a sensor, like an accelerometer or a gyroscope. It is just cheaper. The accuracy is improved by some sort of differential measurement.
You can buy a sensor pack for your car that consists of two GPS receivers, and some other stuff (sorry, not really my field), that provides the same functionality as the old Correvit or datron gear that was used to detect vehicle speed and sideslip and yaw velocity and so on.
“GPS satellites do NOT receive any signals from your car”
absolutely true (and obvious to anyone who’s ever used a handheld), but this is so easily combined with a transmittal system that anyone following the insurance and safety Nazi lobbying agenda gets scared. Slippery slope argument or not, they should be.
“It is just cheaper. The accuracy is improved by some sort of differential measurement.”
This is actually my problem with it, I’ve never seen a GPS result that would lead me to trust the system’s ability to measure inches (yaw velocity) or to do so in a timely manner (more to the point). Possibly it could take control of the car’s throttle/brakes to ensure a sane corner entry speed, but couldn’t a navi system combined with sensors do the exact same thing? I may be wrong, and from what you said about sensor packs I might well be, but I haven’t seen it.
DanM,
GPS satellites can NOT know anything about your car. They have no ability to receive data from you car or to relay data to a 3rd party (big brother or otherwise). All a GPS satellite does is transmit a very high precision clock to anyone who can hear it.
That’s true, unless you have a system like OnStar which can transmit the position of the car. That’s great if your car’s been stolen, but it sucks if you’re visiting your mistress.
I don’t have a mistress, but I sure want to be able to take my IT-security hat off when I’m driving my car. My cell phone is bad enough, and I’d rather be driving my car when I’m driving my car.
this is why I drive cars from the 1980s
i wonder what this system would think if you started having some drifting fun? come to think of it, that might make you crash when you would have had some nice drift-o action going on.
i’ve started playing games with all the new cars i drive, how many safety nanny lights can i make come on at once…no amount of microprocessors can over come physics.
@ cretinx
X2! 80’s cars FTW
at this point i might have to keep my ’88 mr2 running forever.