By Andrew Liszewski
Sure the Drive-e-mocion is a novel but limited way to communicate with other drivers (or at least those other drivers currently behind your own vehicle) but it’s really lacking in the high-tech department.
Sony is currently patenting a more elaborate means to get your message across to nearby drivers. The system uses high-powered LEDs built into a vehicle’s headlights that appear to produce a continuous beam of light but in fact are rapidly flashing an encoded message. A light sensor on the target vehicle would then decode the message and deliver it to the other driver. Other interesting applications include the ability for a traffic light to beam out a countdown of how long it will remain on red and police cars or ambulances being able to beam out emergency messages to many different vehicles.
While the traffic light application is something I’d love to see I still think it’s not the greatest of ideas to make it easier for drivers to communicate with each other. Being able to easily ‘express’ ones feelings towards another motorist seems like a quick path to more road rage in my opinion.
Car-to-Car Chat: Sony Patents Talking Headlights…
This idea of communicating from car to car seems to be gaining some traction, and Sony is next with a patent that uses powerful LEDs built in to car headlights that flash encoded messages similar to Morse code, but a……
“applications include the ability for a traffic light to beam out a countdown of how long it will remain on red” Street racers will be thrilled with this one.
“A light sensor on the target vehicle would then decode the message and deliver it to the other driver.” Great… you used to be able to ignore the idiots, now they can write their epithets out and send them to you!
Or more likely a mesh network to inform the cars of impending problems. With this tech you wouldn?t need constant connection with cars, just junction boxes placed here and there. That way you could send info to the onboard computer about all kinds of things, like traffic updates. Then just use the mesh to propagate the info. Could be useful way beyond telling off another driver, though that I?m sure that would happen. Hopefully just one more step towards self driving cars, something I feel really needs to happen soon.