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from the squealing-kid-not-serpentine-belt dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1
As cars get smarter, more and more of them are going to give their owners preventative maintenance alerts. It's one of the benefits to consumers regularly touted by advocates of the connected car, and even some older cars can get in on the action via aftermarket units that connect to a car's onboard diagnostics port.
However, that last one might not be necessary if a technique being developed by some researchers at MIT pans out. Rather than plugging a diagnostic dongle into a car's controller area network—with the attendant hacking risk—Joshua Siegel and his colleagues reckon a smartphone's microphone and accelerometers could be sufficient.
Some of his research has just been published in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence; specifically a paper that shows that audio data collected by a smartphone alone can diagnose an air filter that needs to be changed.
The idea behind it is quite simple. A dirty or occluded filter—blocked by leaves, for example—will let a different flow of air through it than one that's working as designed. And that difference will result in different auditory and vibratory signals. (This is important because a dirtier or occluded filter won't send the optimal amount of cold fresh air to the engine, which means worse fuel economy and increased wear.)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:24PM (1 child)
It will sure take the struggle out of wire tapping people when they otherwise would be expected to have their phone in a case or purse or their pocket.
Just add a clause that states your car performance recordings are subject to governmental and other 3rd party sharing.
really, you'd think maybe they could just put a couple sensors in the areas that this app says it's paying attention to, and then use the computers used for the entertainment system or whatever.
I guess that doesn't fit with the advertising model, though, if the key words and music listened to can't be used to personally market things to you. Shaazam!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:51PM
What if there's a free software project after the patent expires to do this? (Assuming something won't be available sooner, which it likely will.)
Then I can use my free software Raspberry PI entertainment center to listen to and analyze my 1970s carburetor engine.
I bought a 2011 car new after I got a promotion and thought I was slick. I've since seen the errors of my youth. Corporations are not be trusted. Proprietary software is not to be trusted. Engines that will not run without proprietary software are not to be trusted.