Modern cars have LOTS of sensors. The hardware and software in modern cars is simply staggering, but what is the point of all that data?
Well, most of it is used by the car to monitor all the various systems, while service technicians can also access it to see what has gone wrong when something does.
But Ford have taken that concept a step further by developing an open-source system called OpenXC that the company has made available to anyone who wants to develop applications that use some or all of that data. But what kind of things could you do with it?
That is what Ford and blog of awesomeness Boing Boing wanted to find out, so they teamed up at the Boing Boing Ingenuity Hack Day at San Francisco recently.
Called “Data Driven” the hack day saw more than 50 very clever people getting into the data downloaded from a Ford C-Max equipped with the company’s OpenXC hardware/software system – and the results may not exactly be what you were expecting!
It is exciting to see a company like Ford not only embrace the open-source way of thinking, but also getting involved with extraordinarily clever and talented people outside of the motoring industry to bring a fresh and relevant approach to the future of its cars.
