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| New apps will soon be able to update route maps in real time to avoid potholes like this 2015 monster on the N3 highway. |
BMW North America boasted it has turned the car
into a personalised digital device.
The company announced a new personal mobility
companion app at this week’s Microsoft’s Build conference in San Francisco.
Built around a flexible infrastructure called
the Open Mobility Cloud, the system is designed to learn about a driver’s route
and use traffic information to estimate arrival times. The app also learns
patterns and can send the driver reminders of appointments and automatically
pick the least congested route to the destination. The app is only available in
the U.S, but it is not unique to BMW, as that group of clever students at the
Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have already equipped the
world’s first family car to be powered entirely by sunlight, the Stella Lux,
with a tablet that uses Google maps and Google calendar to render the same basic
reminder and destination matching services.
What the students’ apps don’t have is the BMW’s
ability to learn and adapt, but Google’s DeepMind has already beaten the world’s
best Go player, hence it’s only a matter of time before all smartphones can help
you drive. — WR.
