The car as a rolling collection of sensors

We’re at ITS America Annual Meeting, National Harbor, Washington DC  this week (see the team in action below), the yearly opportunity for the US intelligent transportation community to get together and discuss how IT and technology can be used to better serve travelers, industry and government. Real-time, the Smart City and Vehicle-2-Vehicle communication have been the trend topics.  Bill Ford previously said “the car will be a rolling set of sensors” has echoed here.  Martin Thall, VP Telematics at Verizon talked about the issues of getting the data up from the vehicle, and how 4G / LTE will be key due to the large volume of fast data, however the pricing and subscription model for 4G services is currently one of the hurdles to wider telematics adoption.  Essentially real-time Big Data requirements for mission critical applications, the area where SQLstream excels.

Chris Vein, deputy white house CTO discussed the need for open standards, and for government to find ways for private industry to participate more.  The idea of “government as platform, encouraging the “lean startup” and to offer “smart disclosure” of data to encourage information sharing and real innovation.

Why is my GPS Travel Time always wrong?

Ursula Burns, Xerox CEO captured exactly the need for SQLstream s-Transport. How come, every morning when I drive to work, does my GPS always tell me the journey will take 37 minutes, and it has yet to take 37 minutes?  Accurate and reliable real-time Travel Time is the first problem SQLstream solved with the SQLstream s-Transport product.  Using GPS data to monitor traffic flow accurately and in real-time, and present correct end to end journey time information throughout the journey, not just at the beginning.  (More on SQLstream s-Transport here).

I’ll update and publish a final report on the show  these next final few days. If you’re attending ITS America Annual Conference, National Harbor, Washington DC, please drop by Booth #631.