Ford shows off its vehicle to vehicle communication system at Computex

BLIND corners could soon be a thing of the past with new car technology that can ‘see’ around corners.

Creepy or cool?

THIS moring at a car park in Taipei, Ford demonstrated their futuristic vehicle-to-vehicle technology. The technology helps to prevent collisions and currently alerts the driver of a potential accident but still relies on the driver to take action. In the future it’s easy to see that automated braking or crash avoidance systems could take control of the vehicle to avoid a collision.

Currently accidents happen when the intent of one driver is not understood by another and there’s little or no time to react. Ford’s vehicle-to-vehicle communication uses a custom Wi-Fi standard to securely connect to other vehicles using the same standard. The vehicles’ trajectory is communicated and allow a vehicle to alert the driver of impending dangers.

The technology lets cars share anonymous information about speed, position and predicted path with other vehicles, which has the potential to decrease collisions, help ease traffic jams and contribute to more efficient driving patterns.

Ford is hoping to create major research partnerships in the United States and Europe with public authorities, standards organisations and other global automakers to develop standards for V2V technologies that would allow all automotive manufacturers to participate and create a standard for conversations between vehicles.

Almost every vehicle safety system available relies on the ability to monitor and adapt to the environment around them. While this sounds impressive, this suffers from major flaws, the systems used like lidar are expensive and restricted to line of sight. Many road and environmental challenges are unseen and Ford’s V2V systems aim to reduce if not solve those problems.

By vehicles communicating with each other, they can transmit their intentions and essentially see cars coming around a corner, despite how blind the entry is. If an impending problem is detected, the driver can be alerted much sooner than when they spot the danger. This means a warning message in either visual or audio can alert the driver of a potential danger and they can safely apply the brakes before the impending accident arises.

News_Image_File: Blind corners will no longer be a problem.

One of the smartest part about the V2V implementation by Ford is that both vehicles’ GPS locations are obtained independently, then regardless of its accuracy, are transmitted to the vehicle nearby, determining the distance apart every few micro seconds. This means if the GPS accuracy is irrelevant, +1 or –1m is going to be the same for each vehicle and it’s the diminishing distance between the two that’s important.

It really is just a matter of time (and perhaps liability) as to when computers clearly surpass human capabilities and reaction times and automatic intervention is applied. Clearly this introduces a massive legal question, if your car takes over and you still have an accident, is the manufacturer liable in any way, or will purchasing the car be the point where liability is shifted to the driver?

Whatever the outcome, being able to ‘see around corners’ is an amazing accomplishment, regardless of how it’s achieved. Having the data between cars be anonymous and on a dedicated secure standard should reduce, if not eliminate hacking that would potentially diminish consumer confidence in the technology.

The technology is definitely in the experimental stage, with each demo requiring the drivers of the 2 Kuga’s to radio to each other and initiate the next example. Each demonstration of the software is currently being initiated with a mouse and Ford aren’t talking a date for this tech to reach consumers.

This article originally appeared on techAU.

News_Rich_Media: V2V demo