Ford Flexes Its Technological Muscles Again

Ford space connectivity model (Credit: Ford)

The simple fact is that Ford has been pushing the boundaries of technology big time. If you can’t admit that, you likely have a vehicle with a bowtie on it sitting in your driveway or you haven’t been paying much attention. Sure, there are other automakers out there that are moving and shaking when it comes to tech, but Ford is right up there with a lot of them.

This time, Ford has teamed up with St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University to create a prototype data communications system that’s supposed to be incredibly reliable. Such a design would be used to push forward future connected vehicles, and the plan involves leveraging space robot communication practices.

Basically, the technology Ford’s working on would help keep vehicles connected to the cloud. People can use all sorts of cloud-based services to access traffic information, weather conditions, road alerts, music and more. In other words, this development is about more than just keeping people entertained while they’re stuck in traffic.

The big key is to avoid connectivity interruptions, which would be something home Internet service providers should seriously look into. To do this, Ford says that cars would access data through cell towers, WiFi, the road infrastructure itself and even other vehicles. Software written by the development team automatically selects the best connection method at any given time.

With this technology in practice, police or fire departments could send out notifications to drivers in the event of an accident, poor road conditions or other emergency, helping reroute traffic and make everyone aware of dangers. Even better, if one car encounters black ice on a certain section of road, it can automatically warn other cars in the area about the invisible hazard, hopefully preventing a serious crash.

Ford owners could benefit as well from over-the-air updates, similar to what Tesla pushes out to its cars, which would help patch glitches in a car’s software and even protect against new hacking threats.