CarTorrent is on its way
As you may have already guessed CarTorrent will be a peer-to-peer network like BitTorrent, with the peers being cars. Mario Gerla and Giovanni Pau of UCLA Engineering's Network Research Lab team came up with the idea in 2004 when peer-to-peer networks first became popular. They wanted civilian applications for the technology and thought the car would be a good starting point. The idea of CarTorrent is to have a network of cars continuously relaying information to each other and to wireless internet access points.
The shared information would come in three categories: content distribution (local information such as upcoming attractions, advertisements, etc.), safety/navigation (road conditions, accident and traffic reports would be relayed along the network) and surveillance (collecting data that police could later use in investigations).
Content distribution seems like a fairly mundane proposition. It is already fairly easy to find out information about local hotels, attractions etc. without stopping. Automating the process might be nice though. The safety/navigation aspect of the network is the interesting part of CarTorrent.
Sharing safety and navigation information on the fly will be a tremendous improvement. For example, cars could be alerted to specific patches of ice rather than relying on area weather reports that are half an hour old. The same goes for traffic conditions. Cars will also have sensing devices such as radar and video cameras to reduce the chance of accidents. Eventually the car itself may react to imminent danger rather than the much slower to react driver.
These sensing devices will have a key role in the third type of information, surveillance. The idea behind this is that the police can use data collected by cars that were in the area for their investigations. This gets into a gray area and is sure to cause controversy. What's to stop them from surveilling you? That's another story though.
The team is already collaborating with car manufacturers such as BMW and Toyota to bring the system to life. They expect their networking platform to be up and running by 2012. The network will use Digital Short Range Communication (DSRC) combined with wireless LAN technology at 5.9 GHz, and cars should be capable of communication with other cars up to 300 meters away. It is the cost and industry standards that pose the difficulties for the project right now, though according to Gerla, "What will turn the tide will be the approval and widespread adoption of the emerging standards for car-to-car communications sponsored by the IEEE 802.11p Working Committee."
The cost of the system is expected to be around $500. It may take quite a while to become popular considering the cost and the fact that there is no advantage of being the first person on a peer-to-peer network.
[via The Guardian]
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