The Connected Vehicle

We've been mainly talking about information and knowledge management on our blog here, but I wanted to shift gears to discuss connected vehicle technology (bad pun completely intentional!).  Somat Engineering has a long history with infrastructure and transportation engineering, so we've been applying that experience to intelligent transportation systems (ITS), which includes connected vehicle technology.  With our headquarters being in Detroit, there is a natural fit and base here for such work - not to mention a major need to rewire our economy and create new jobs in this space.

Technologies whereby vehicles "talk" to each other are on the horizon and hold so many exciting possibilities and benefits.  The Department of Transportation is taking a hard look at various approaches with safety as the first priority.  For instance, imagine your car alerting you when the driver next to you is about to do something stupid (or alerting the other driver to prevent the potential dumb move).

But safety is just the beginning of the benefits.  Traffic congestion reduction is another potential plus - major cities in Europe are already starting to employ the latest information technology to reduce their traffic problems.  The benefits here are multiple - smog reduction, stress reduction, less idle gas burning, more productivity, etc.  Another benefit of ITS can be security - countries like Mexico are using innovative vehicle identification technologies to crack down on drug trafficking, etc.

We've got a number of initiatives in ITS underway and look forward to talking about them more in the coming weeks and months.