The Future in Gear [Cover Story]
September 3, 2002
On the Road: DriveBy InfoFueling Car
Will your car be your next wireless accessory?
By Cade Metz
Developer: DaimlerChrysler and Atheros Communications Inc.
Imagine driving past a music store and downloading MP3 files straight into your car's entertainment system. Or sending vacation photos to friends and family while speeding home on the highway. Within the next several years, these tasks could be commonplace. Partnering with wireless hardware manufacturer Atheros Communications, engineers at the DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, have already demonstrated a Mercedes-Benz C320 sedan that uses high-speed wireless technology to exchange data with nearby computing stations.
Smart enough to trade files with your home PC while sitting in the driveway or talk to roadside stations while in transit, such a car is capable of many different tasks. "Today, you can pay a toll while driving down the road, but our technology allows for much more," says Wieland Holfelder, manager of the Smart Vehicles Research Group at the DaimlerChrysler research center, who supervised the development of the Mercedes prototype. "You could download traffic information, receive road condition warnings, make parking payments, and upload e-mail to the Internet."
The new prototype, known as the DaimlerChrysler DriveBy InfoFueling Car, is basically a top-of-the-line Mercedes sedan that's equipped with a wireless antenna and some additional software. The antenna plugs straight into the car's existing telematics system, which is a series of electronic devices—including a radio, a CD player, a navigation system, and a cell phone—operated via voice commands. The DaimlerChrysler research team has simply written new commands that let you shuttle information between the telematics system and computing stations sitting outside the car. "You can just say 'I want to download this song,' and the system will download it for you," says Holfelder.
When the car was first demonstrated at last year's Fall Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, it drove around a track and exchanged data with a station a few dozen feet away. It was able to download not only digital music files for the car's stereo but also maps and traffic information for the navigation system. Just as easily, it uploaded information to the computing station, including e-mail messages and digital video files. This exchange becomes particularly useful if the station can then pass data to the Internet. "Say you're on your way back from vacation and you pass a wireless bay station," says Sheung Li, the product line manager at Atheros, which supplied all of the car's wireless components. "You could upload videos to the Internet and send pictures to Grandma before you get home."
When Holfelder and his team first designed their prototype over a year and half ago, its wireless antenna used the 802.11b protocol—the same protocol currently used to build wireless LANs in homes, offices, and public spaces such as coffee shops. But then the ASTM International, a global standards organization, proposed a standard for vehicular wireless applications known as DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications), which uses the newer 802.11a protocol. The DaimlerChrysler team joined the push for standardization and equipped its Mercedes with an 802.11a radio before unveiling the car at Comdex.
The 802.11a standard is powerful enough to run almost any wireless application from a moving car. It transmits at 5 GHz, sending almost five times as much data per second as 802.11b, and operates over a range of several hundred feet. And according to recent tests done by the Federal Highway Administration, several state highway agencies, and independent companies bent on promoting DSRC, 802.11a works flawlessly even when installed in a car traveling as fast as 125 mph.
But the main reason Holfelder and his team switched the InfoFueling Car to DSRC is that it's an industry standard. Equipping a car with a wireless antenna is pointless unless others are going to build roadside computing stations that know how to talk to that antenna. Several companies are already using DSRC to create roadside stations. Shell Oil, for instance, has partnered with IBM to build wireless hubs at its gas stations, which will let drivers pay for their gas wirelessly and download information like maps and traffic information.
Such companies are building DSRC hubs because so many automobile manufacturers are building DSRC cars. In addition to DaimlerChrysler, companies such as Ford, GM, and Toyota are working on prototypes. All of these models should reach the market within five to ten years. Just think of what you'll be able to do down the road.
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