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Smart Cars
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| To Inform and Entertain |
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| Updated |
Jul 7, 2004 20:30:56 |
| Rating |
 197 ( -26 -13.19% ) | | Author | Tara Baukus Mello |
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Description:
It was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was headed south on Interstate 101 with the rest of the San Francisco commuters. I'd been gone for nearly two weeks and was now headed to the SFO airport to catch a flight to Los Angeles and home. Mercedes had instructed me to leave my test vehicle, the Mercedes-Benz S500, at the airport they would retrieve it and I decided to use my favorite feature one last time. With my thumb, I pushed a button on the steering wheel.
"Dial number," I said.
"The number please," a pleasant female voice answered back. I called out the 10 digits for my voice mail number as if I were giving the number to a friend. The female voice repeated it back to me. When she was done, I said "Dial." A series of beeps could be heard through the speaker and soon the computer-generated voice from Pacific Bell's voice messaging service answered and asked me to enter my password. Using voice commands, I entered my password and accessed, deleted and saved various messages. When I was through, I pushed the button on the steering wheel to disconnect the call. My eyes never left the road and both hands remained on the steering wheel. The future of automotive technology is here and I like it. In the second installment of our two-part series on automobile technology, we'll look at smart cars and the comfort and convenience features that can make our lives on the road more pleasant. Getting Connected
Talk To Me
Let Us Entertain You
Mirror, Mirror
Getting Connected
It's no secret that the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years and it was only a matter of time before automakers and suppliers figured out how to put access in vehicles. Mercedes-Benz became the first company to offer Web-based information at a production level in September. With any 2001 Mercedes-Benz equipped with a COMAND LCD display, owners can subscribe to Info Services offered through CNN Interactive. Subscribers pay an annul fee and set their preferences from their home computer using their personal Web page on the Mercedes-Benz USA Website. Once in the vehicle, they simply push a button on the center console to get a display listing current stock quotes, weather, news and sports customized specifically for them. General Motors' OnStar division offer in-vehicle services that are similar to Mercedes' Tele Aid system. By the end of this year, OnStar will expand its services to offer its Virtual Advisor Internet access. Like Mercedes system, OnStar will allow users to choose custom settings for items such as stock quotes, news, weather and sports, but instead of displaying these updates on a screen, OnStar's system uses voice-recognition to allow the user to interact with a computer interface that is actually a (recorded) human voice. The voice then reads the information requested aloud, including personal e-mails, reducing the distraction of pushing buttons or viewing a screen when driving. Talk To Me
This technology, often referred to as telematics, has a multitude of possible applications, the most common of which is a link to a call center which can assist the vehicle occupants with just about anything. By using the built-in cellular phone and the global positioning satellite, the call center can unlock your doors, dispatch an ambulance or a tow truck and can even perform some diagnostics on your vehicle if it is not running properly. One push of a button in many of these systems will connect you with a live person who can act as a concierge, making hotel or restaurant reservations or providing information about attractions or points of interest in any city or region. It's sort of like having your own personal assistant in both human and electronic forms. Let Us Entertain You
Features such as VCRs and PlayStations are now fairly common in minivans and some SUVs, where keeping the back seat passengers (a.k.a. the kids) entertained is top priority. These mobile theater units as they are called are godsends to parents who tire of hearing, "Are we there yet?" The future will see more options becoming available for these systems, including the ability to allow rear seat passengers more selection, such as a DVD movie on one screen and a PlayStation game on the other. On the music side, satellite radio, which will provide uninterrupted music, is on the way. Two companies, XM and Sirius, are the primary players and both have formed agreements with multiple automakers to place satellite radios in vehicles in early 2001. Often compared to cable television, satellite radio offers a wide selection of channels of specific genres of music aimed at a narrow audience. Though not expected to replace local radio, satellite radio will offer listeners commercial-free music with a consistent signal, eliminating the constant need to change stations when driving long distances. Mirror, Mirror
With such a large number of vehicles on the market in many different configurations, one of the most logical places to install this equipment is in the rearview mirror. Because of their position in the vehicle, rear-view mirrors provide a great location for a microphone to detect voice commands, for a driver to access services at the touch of a button and, because of their open area to the sky, to receive satellite signals. Gentex Corporation, who already has rearview mirrors with these features on 14 vehicle models, is rapidly expanding to additional vehicles. In the not-so-distant future, telematics mirrors, as they are called, will become even more advanced, with the ability to access the Internet through your personal laptop from a wireless modem located in the mirror. Although there are a significant number of vehicles with these in-car communication features available today, we are only seeing the beginning of this technology. GM's OnStar is expanding beyond the General Motors product line and will soon be available in Hondas, Acuras and others. Ford, who just recently announced a similar in-car communication service, says that one million Ford vehicles will have the service, tentatively named Wingcast, by 2002 with it featured in nearly every new Ford vehicle by 2004. The very near future will allow us to integrate all of the features discussed here; creating the best package that suits our needs, and integrates it into the vehicle of our choosing.
Smart Cars, Part I: Safety technology
Copyright 2000, Tara Baukus Mello. Â |
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