A GOOD road trip needs decent music. But how do you know which tunes you鈥檒l
want to hear a hundred miles down the road? With the Internet car it鈥檚 not a
problem鈥攚hatever you want will be waiting for you at the next signpost.
Just grab it as you go by.
Turning signposts into drive-through jukeboxes is the brainchild of Hiroyuki
Morikawa at the University of Tokyo. He鈥檚 looking forward to the day when
drivers will be able to request music files on the move and receive them just a
few minutes later over a wireless network.
But it鈥檚 not that easy just yet. Music files such as MP3s are large, and when
demand is high鈥攁s it鈥檚 likely to be when many cars are hooked
up鈥攕ending them over a standard cellular network will take too long. The
answer, Morikawa says, is to combine a variety of networks. Alongside the
cellular network will be ultra-fast 鈥渉ot-spotted鈥� networks that beam information
from antennas on signposts or buildings onto patches only a few metres
across.
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The trick to grabbing tunes on the go is to use both networks, says Morikawa.
You send your request over the cellular network but pick it up from a hot spot.
Liaising between the two is a program called a correspondent host. 鈥淪ay the
driver requests an MP3 music file,鈥� says Morikawa. 鈥淭hat takes too long over the
cellular network, so the request is forwarded to the correspondent host. That
prefetches the MP3 file and passes it on to the hot-spotted network.鈥� The music
is then waiting at the next hot spot along the car鈥檚 route. As the car passes,
it beams the file out.
But how does the network know which hot spot the car will pass next? 鈥淥n
highways it鈥檚 easy, because you鈥檙e only going one way,鈥� says Morikawa. 鈥淚n a big
city environment, it鈥檚 harder, but the car will have a Global Positioning System
so you can just send the file to the nearest hot spots.鈥�
GRIDLOCK could get pretty bizarre in the wireless world. Thanks to Internet
technology, Tokyo鈥檚 traffic jams are going to be transformed into raucous
karaoke parties.
According to Masao Nakagawa of Keio University in Yokohama, high-speed radio
links aren鈥檛 just for connecting cars to the Internet. They could also let
drivers share information with vehicles nearby.
Wireless links could be used to create what Nakagawa calls a 鈥渧irtual wagon鈥�.
鈥淵ou have a very good data link between a few cars,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou could arrange
it so the people in the middle car hear the people in front through their front
speakers and the people behind through their rear speakers.鈥� The virtual wagon
would let travellers share music or conversation without having to be in the
same car.
Being in radio contact with fellow drivers might make it easier for people to
vent their road rage, but Nakagawa sees a far more entertaining use for the
technology. 鈥淲e have this thing called karaoke. You could have everyone joining
in,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檇 be very good for keeping you awake on a long drive.鈥�
THE networked car isn鈥檛 only about getting information to the driver. Hideki
Sunahara and his colleagues at Keio University in Yokohama say that vehicles
should be talking back to the Internet. 鈥淚nformation flow must be two-way,鈥� says
Sunahara. 鈥淎ll these cars are out there. Why not use them as a widely
distributed array of sensors?鈥�
Around 80 million cars are constantly speeding, crawling or loitering around
the streets of Japan. Sunahara鈥檚 plan is to use them to generate unrivalled
up-to-the-minute weather and traffic reports.
Cars on the move can provide a wealth of information, says Sunahara.
鈥淎nything governed by electronics in the car can effectively be sent to the
Internet and processed,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou can then feed back useful information to
the cars.鈥�
In a test this April, Sunahara鈥檚 group fitted cars with Global Positioning
System receivers and wireless Internet connections. Each car fed back
information on its position, speed and the state of its windscreen wipers. 鈥淲ith
this information, you can work out where traffic is moving well and where it鈥檚
not moving at all,鈥� says Sunahara. Knowing which cars have their windscreen
wipers on, and at what speed, gives an accurate real-time view of where it鈥檚
raining and how heavy it may be.
And this is just the beginning. Sunahara says there are around 120 different
vehicle functions that could be monitored. The data would be used to build a
picture of local air quality, temperature, visibility, and so on. It could also
help individual drivers, by making vehicle faults easier to diagnose, and help
insurance companies confirm details of traffic accidents.
Inevitably, advertisers will get in on the act, says Sunahara. 鈥淚f you were
sending out information on the state of your fuel tank, you could get details of
offers from local gas stations,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou could even use it to get data on
the music people listen to while they鈥檙e driving and create a hit list.鈥�
A RED traffic light isn鈥檛 usually a welcome sight. But if researchers in
Japan get their way, you鈥檒l have something to keep you busy while you wait for
the signal to change.
Because traffic lights are so commonplace and have to be within easy view of
vehicles, they would make ideal information points for Internet cars. Instead of
tapping your foot when you pull up at a red, you鈥檒l be downloading
data鈥擶eb pages, MP3 files or adverts for the nearest fuel station.
Ordinary traffic lights make poor transmitters because they can鈥檛 be switched
on and off fast enough. But in Japan, local councils are installing traffic
lights made up of arrays of light emitting diodes (LEDs). The main reason is
that LEDs consume about a third of the power of traditional lamps, but there is
another advantage: they can flash information to your car. 鈥淟EDs can be switched
very quickly,鈥� says Masao Nakagawa of Keio University in Yokohama.
By switching LEDs at ultra-fast rates, vast amounts of information can be
transmitted in a fraction of a second. 鈥淵ou could modulate the light so it
encodes data,鈥� says Nakagawa. 鈥淭hat can be beamed to your car while you鈥檙e
waiting for the signal to change.鈥� LEDs can be switched so fast they could
transmit data at around 100 megabits per second. That鈥檚 around 10,000 times
faster than current WAP phones, says Nakagawa.