Internet of things – the phrase seemed rather obfuscating at
first.
But when I thought closely, it fits in so well in the
direction the world is headed. Imagine your television communicating with your
doorbell to turn on the TV to the Euro Cup Final that you ran from the office
to watch. The concept, “Internet of Things”, has that power.
We are proud to present you 'DriveSafe'. What it
does is, it determines how well you’re driving based on how fast you’re driving
and how quick you steer that wheel in your hand. The idea is, if you’re turning
the steering wheel at a faster speed than stipulated at a given speed of your
vehicle, you’re driving dangerously enough for your fellow drivers. That is to say, we don't judge how you drive, your car says if you're driving her good or bad. And dare you turn bad on her!
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| Courtesy: http://t1.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/24/68/52/400_.....jpg |
While this not only gives the law and administration a better insight into a
driver before they charge him with reckless driving, it also helps a driver
perform better by indicating where did he go wrong. This is something that a
large auto manufacturer was trying to do with its beautiful android
application, i.e., to understand how drivers interact with an ITS that guides
them on improving. Of course it is not the entire thing behind reckless driving,
but is one of the few that go behind the science of safe driving.
With all these “DriveSafe”s put on in every car, you could
have interesting things done. If you’re a driver yourself, you would know the
ease that you’ll be at, while driving, if you know how well the person in front
of you, or even behind you, drives. E.g. if I have bad drivers around me, I
need to drive cautiously. I could be at ease otherwise. Tell me that you haven't felt a difference when you and your friend were racing down that lane, weren't you more aware of his possible responses just because you knew him as a person.
Now the product DriveSafe, maintains a log of your driving activity and gives
you an overall rating
of 1 to 100 as to how well you drive, determined by the
higher this number. While driving your windscreen changes to a digital panel,
with the car in front of you, branded by its driver’s score. Now you know that
a #40 driver could make a sharp turn while if it’s #98 in front of you, he most
probably will be driving safe. Hence you could make that effort and overtake
him safely. Following image may help you at visualization.
A challenge as Sameer clearly identified is to evaluate this information really quickly for in smaller lanes, traffic moves really fast. Well, Sameer, I have answers to your questions. How we do it really fast, is what I answer in my follow up post. How we do it for smaller lanes is something that I answer right after the next paragraph.
A challenge as Sameer clearly identified is to evaluate this information really quickly for in smaller lanes, traffic moves really fast. Well, Sameer, I have answers to your questions. How we do it really fast, is what I answer in my follow up post. How we do it for smaller lanes is something that I answer right after the next paragraph.
This will do two things. It will make driving a whole lot safer and can ease
off the frustration of individuals when they are befuddled taking the risk of
overtaking the car in front of them. I am not saying this is all that it could
do, but the example above is indicative of the scope of the product, and also
incidentally, its mother. And yes, of course, you will have the power of
turning the feature on or off. Turning on, though, will make your driving much
more fun and game-like. I incidentally am a racing game freak myself and have
always thought of such things.
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| Courtesy: http://images.gizmag.com/inline/cmovie-6.png |
This picture is interesting. If you divide the image from
where this person’s head is, you know what is a possible problem with this
product, from a user experience point of view. It is that it would be a pain
looking at those flying numbers in front of you. That is where the guy is
looking. The solution lies on the other side of his head. Instead of a numerical score we give the driver
an aura, his DriverAura that is indicative of his driving
behaviour. E.g. Red for <40; yellow for 40-70 and Green for 70-100s. Now
this turns into a Call of Duty MW game, where your screen is all red and green
and you could locate that sweet spot to drive your vehicle.
And now before you go about "this is utter nonsense" and "the man is too imaginative" mode, like my friend Prateek here, hold your horses. For I have a surprise for you. In my following post, I will walk you through how exactly is it possible. Leave a comment below and I will follow up with the post. This is not only possible but envisioned here in New Delhi on
October 13th, 2013. The only concern is how long before we see this
happening. Thanks for the feedback Prateek for having me re look at the idea to answer your questions
I’d request you to
write how you think about the idea below this post & vote & share if you’d like to
see it happen.
Well this, my friend, is a sample comment. Follow suit, below! :) ;)
ReplyDeleteHi Aishie,
ReplyDeleteI will be very candid with my response and I hope you will be able to appreciate my honest stand.
At the first instance of reading about this idea, my thought is that this whole concept is like a comet that we can see from earth, brilliant to look at but of no use. The reason why i say this is that when I visualize this idea implemented in our very own India, I see absolutely no use of this app/concept while driving, because safely assuming, more than 90% of driving done in India is Work Related, and a very less amount can be attributed to leisure. Hence, if I am driving for work, my basic thought while driving is to reach my destination in the least possible time, where every other driver is as erratic as probably I myself am, because most of us are trying to dodge the driver not only in front of me, but on either sides as well. Hence, the rating of that driver via a halo/score is irrelevant because no matter if he is the highest rated driver, I will figure out my next driving move in a split second without the rating as well. And no matter how well your rating scorecard is made, you can never achieve a system that can perfectly predict the move of the other drivers. There will always be a gap between the perfection achieved by the ratings and the behavior of the driver. Hence, my initial thought.
However, (haha, i love the way how we all add a but/however to everything), me being a gamer myself, I simply adore the idea of this concept and long for a hood display on my windshield with animations and scores. Hence, your idea scores pretty high there and it will be really fun as well functional in an ideal scenario. To add to your concept, we can feed this data to a central Traffic Management system that can further estimate almost the exact time of our journey and feed it back to the hood by calculating the ratings for drivers, speed, and traffic at specific points. It can even give ratings to any specific crossing by calculating the average ratings of drivers and other data and tell you something cool like "(beautiful feminine voice) The average rating for the next crossing is 25, Aishie, I suggest you take the next right and avoid the losers". This traffic management system can further manage the overall traffic by always balancing the ratings for any particular crossing to the highest ratings possible of lets say 75. Hence, rendering your concept even more useful and making the game even more interactive.
Hmmm, now I am really in the mental-masturbation mode. Anyways, you always have a choice to ignore the babbling i just did above.
Cheers.
Hi
ReplyDeleteI am firstly sorry for the late response.
To the first part of your reply, yes I do agree that the system finds limited implications for an end user per se. But recently while reading "Thinking Fast & Slow" by Daniel Kahnemann, I thought if we could impact the slow thinking of drivers to interfere with the fast thinking, helping them make more informed decisions in the limited time available, this could be a value add. Also, a rating of the driver in front of you will give you an idea of how likely he is to make a sudden shift in his trajectory.
The second part of your reply talks of a wonderful add-on to the product. I am definitely going to see if this is a possibility.
On a related context, I'd like to know where are you based out of. Finding collaborators is a difficult task, and I really value the detailed response to the post. I see us working together on the project. Tell me how could we take this further. :)
Would love to contribute once you have reached some level of formation with the idea. Keep me updated of developments.
Delete