Car IoT

As aircraft have become software with wings, so are cars on their way to become software on wheels. Self driving and IoT have accelerated this trend. Yesterday, when I was talking with my friends we envisioned a design that could improve driving comfort: Cars could collect vibration data measured by their sensors and transmit it together with location information to servers. This data would indicate road quality. The server could process and broadcast data to all cars. Other cars could adjust suspension settings in advance that would maximize comfort on that road.

With this technique, only the first few cars that collected data would suffer and the rest would benefit. Data would be current at all times. I think Google Maps uses a similar approach to guess traffic congestion by collecting data from smartphones.

To collect data we need:

• Vibration sensors on car.
• Access to internet and access to central data server

To adapt to road conditions we need:

• Adaptable suspension on car (i.e. actuators and sensors)
• Access to internet and data server by car.

If we could protect privacy, we could automatically tap into the intelligence of the swarm.

Note to self: Do a simpler version of this concept as a hobby project.