Cars of the Future

[Anthony]

holy shitballs, this looks awesome:

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[Karlifornia]

That's great, but how do you use the shells?

[Young Drachma]

My watch does everything but tell time.

[Buccaneer]

Great, more things to keep drivers from paying attention to driving. I would hope that in the future, the idea of a single passenger car in an urban environment would be outmoded.

[jeff061]

You can do most of that now. Not much to do with cars. If you are a do it yourself type you can do all that and more.

Some of it is not feasible, the text to speech of that clarity is way the hell off and the graphics of are much to quick.

[Anthony]

so you're saying that was made up and not an actual prototype? i can't think of a reason why Ford would come out with this and have people expecting just exactly what is shown on that screen (looks like its from some type of trade show) and then come out with a robotic "Speak and Spell" stephen hawking sounding thing with a talking smiley face.

it does seem rather unbelievable with how quickly the AI read the email text with some mannerisms that normal speech contains. its like you'd think we'd have that technology right now. seems unlikely that Ford invented such a thing for the sole use to put it in a car. i know we have technology that kinda does that, but certainly not with such ease as this clip has shown, or else we'd know about it by now. and i'll agree that image of the talking woman seemed a little too perfect.

still, it seemed real nifty. to be able to have a search engine like that where you say some key words and the AI can find an article matching what you want and read it to you. very futuristic. but now that some people mention it i guess this seems a little too good to be true. i just don't see the advantage to doing a bait and switch here though if you're Ford.

[M GO BLUE!!!]

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[jeff061]

so you're saying that was made up and not an actual prototype?



I think it was a mock up of ideas, I don't think that was a actual functioning presentation. We are a long way off for that kind of text to speech and the graphical representation of the speaker in my opinion is even a more distant possibility. The way it flipped through pages while it was searching? I don't see that either.

still, it seemed real nifty. to be able to have a search engine like that where you say some key words and the AI can find an article matching what you want and read it to you. very futuristic. but now that some people mention it i guess this seems a little too good to be true. i just don't see the advantage to doing a bait and switch here though if you're Ford.
My cell phone can do this, both general googling and directions. I bet there are some head units in cars that can(almost positive there are for GPS), you can certainly make one yourself if you have the motivation, pretty much a small form factor PC with a touch screen and you can do anything you want.

Still though, I think the gist of it is what will become more and more standard in vehicles over the years. Which is pretty cool.

[Comey]

I'm not sure I can get behind this if OJ's involved.

[SportsDino]

All of the tech is pretty much there guys, some things have been hollywoodified, such as the lady with speaking head and accent, and the search flashing multiple pages when it wouldn't waste the bandwidth/graphics on such things.

But anyway, what we are going to see is more information technology integrating together with seamless crossover (as in you have a conversation with the machine and it automatically access tools like maps, web search, email as needed with crossreferences like addresses automatically being turned into map links and so on). This is something that could be pretty much slapped together tommorrow into a functional unit, although it will be improving dramatically over the next few years.

One goal of the voice activation is to make it less distracting while driving. I know Ford in particular is paying attention specifically to how this affects driver's attention while driving, and that they are researching whatever they can to avoid accidents (including disabling the technology to limited feature sets while driving being on the table). More tech does not have to accumulate significant distraction, and with other gadgets I've heard of they might even create sensors that assist with avoiding distraction and helping with driving itself (I mean everyone has cruise control, imagine something that automatically radar pulses nearby cars and gives you blindspot warnings or speedmatch settings).

Anyway, its clearly a tech demo for marketing, but I'd say its probably closer to 95% honest with a little 5% added for sci-fi effect.

[SportsDino]

If you like reading about the state of research, search computer science under the topics 'natural language processing' to get most of the conversation with a machine style interface research at its basic level.

I think another term is multi-modal input? Been a while and I always suck with the particular terminology of fields (I'm a generalist type and tend to invent so many terms myself I forget what ones were made by others)... but ya multi-modal input research is basically voice/keyboard/touch screen research, a lot of those projects look at deriving context of what the user wants from very mixed and sparse context-sensitive directions.

Probably easier for me to just find papers and link em, but I'm about to follow my car's gps unit to the nearest casino for some R&R. I'm personally waiting for the ability to troll FOFC from my car while driving, using voice dictation to create overly longwinded posts.

[SFL Cat]

2009 Models

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[DanGarion]

so you're saying that was made up and not an actual prototype? i can't think of a reason why Ford would come out with this and have people expecting just exactly what is shown on that screen (looks like its from some type of trade show) and then come out with a robotic "Speak and Spell" stephen hawking sounding thing with a talking smiley face.

it does seem rather unbelievable with how quickly the AI read the email text with some mannerisms that normal speech contains. its like you'd think we'd have that technology right now. seems unlikely that Ford invented such a thing for the sole use to put it in a car. i know we have technology that kinda does that, but certainly not with such ease as this clip has shown, or else we'd know about it by now. and i'll agree that image of the talking woman seemed a little too perfect.

still, it seemed real nifty. to be able to have a search engine like that where you say some key words and the AI can find an article matching what you want and read it to you. very futuristic. but now that some people mention it i guess this seems a little too good to be true. i just don't see the advantage to doing a bait and switch here though if you're Ford.
Why does the AI have to skim through the data visually? It's all fake.

[Noop]

I want a car that can drive me places.

[Anthony]

Why does the AI have to skim through the data visually? It's all fake.

whats the difference between that and the little graphic of the hourglass we currently get as things load? perhaps that was just a graphic meant to illustrate the search engine was loading the data.

i guess on second thought it seems too outlandish to think we have the capabilities to deliver some of the stuff in the clip. just seems odd to condition people to expect one thing and then what we really have to look forward to is a speak and spell sounding robot voice. what's the point in showing that if it isn't possible in the next 3 years? if i want to see ultra advanced technology, well, that's what science fiction is for.

[Buccaneer]

I want a car that can drive me places.



Miami Limo Service (http://www.limoservicesmiami.com/)

[CU Tiger]

so you're saying that was made up and not an actual prototype? i can't think of a reason why Ford would come out with this and have people expecting just exactly what is shown on that screen (looks like its from some type of trade show) and then come out with a robotic "Speak and Spell" stephen hawking sounding thing with a talking smiley face.


just seems odd to condition people to expect one thing and then what we really have to look forward to is a speak and spell sounding robot voice. what's the point in showing that if it isn't possible in the next 3 years? if i want to see ultra advanced technology, well, that's what science fiction is for.
Not unlike when the new mustang was introduced (well the old new one at this point, anyway the 05s) it was an auto show circuit baby with dual superchargers and an old school solid pushrod V8.....production got no superchargers and a modular design sans pushrods....and 250hp less.

[Anthony]

but the difference is Ford could easily put those superchargers (don't know what those are to be honest) and that old school V8 if they wanted - we already have that technology. as everyone here has stated we apparently don't have the technology that is being showcased in that video clip. if so (and i hate to sound repetitive) - what's the point? at that point might as well show the female driver requesting the AI to shift into hyperdrive and go to light speed.

[Young Drachma]

We have the technology. It just wouldn't work that way. Like someone said, all of that stuff is already doable. It's either 1) too expensive to mass produce in a car like that or 2) works nothing like they showed it.

It wasn't really anything crazy. It was just something reading your voice mail responding to a voice command, in the same way that you can do all sorts of things on the phone via voice command right now.

[Noop]

Miami Limo Service (http://www.limoservicesmiami.com/)

:D