Computer vision application for automotive telematics application

Question

What sort of application can be considered to be the really business winner for automotive telematics applications related to image processing/computer vision ? here are the criteria : 1. Innovative 2. Social 3. Fun.

Answer 1

Have you read the articles from the DARPA grand challenge winners?

DARPA site

Google Scholar

Answer 2

I believe the "DARPA Grand Challenge" style of automation meets your .1 requirement as there are plenty of innovation on that front.

But I still think that we are a good decade away from a fully autonomous vehicle, even though the technology is almost there. The main reason is that people are still very afraid of relenting control to the computer, even though it might be the safest choice. The transition will be slow. More and more models will bring small chunks of automation, such as smarter cruise control systems (that's a big winner right now), autonomous parking (in the market for a while now) and anti collision systems.

Which brings us to your .2 and .3

The above mentioned systems are not fun, they are necessary [for increased safety]. Nowadays, Social Media and Fun don't really mix with driving because they distract the driver from its main task. In the future, when you're on the freeway in auto-pilot mode, you will be able to open your laptop and be free to do whatever you want, since computers will be always connected to the internet. So I don't believe the car itself needs to provide you that aspect of entertainment.

What I do believe it's a killer functionality for cars is the enhancement of intelligent comfort systems integrated with biometrics. Nowadays, cars already have things like personal keys that will make it adjust things like seat height and etc according to your preferences, but it would be much nicer if it could automatically identify who is the driver by some biometric feature (iris, etc) and adjust multiple parameters automatically. That's the end of the key. I'm not talking about seat and pedals adjustment, but transmission style (husband likes a more aggressive transmission), performance limiters (daughter cannot exceed 90% of posted limit... the car knows what the limit is according to where it is).

In my opinion, if you implement biometric recognition + autonomous navigation, the possibilities are endless.

Answer 3

Although none of the applications here use computer vision, they are probably the best once out there yet. They have received quite a bit of media hype.