Google usually handles internet searches, advertising and other high-tech stuff, but it looks like they’ve recently involved in various automotive projects, like the one Ford is going to use for predicting the user’s driving behavior and adapting the power needed for that particular driving style and road.
The official announcement of their partnership was made at last week’s Google I/O in San Francisco.
The Google Prediction API is currently used to detect spam and select the proper advertising for users. Its basic core module can nevertheless be used in a lot of other tasks, since it can learn based on experience. One such application would ask the driver where he wants to go (just like in the picture on the left) when he turns on the engine, and then adapt accordingly.
Certain routes, like the one you take when you go to work, need more or less electric-only mode, and that could be useful when driving a plug-in hybrid, for example.
Ford is known to have partnered with Microsoft for an in-car entertainment system, but now the collaboration with Google opens up an entirely new world of possibilities, given the fact that Google’s apps are usually open source and can be used in a more flexible manner than Microsoft’s.
In fact, Google has already begun experimenting with driverless cars on public roads, and is even pushing Nevada authorities to make such cars fully road legal. Learning algorithms are not anything new to G, and Ford may one day even help them with pursuing the all-automated driving project.
[via zdnet]
