IBM and Fords connect Big Data to cars

2016: IBM and Fords connect Big Data to cars

On January 11, 2016 IBM announced joint work with the auto giant Ford Motor over the experimental platform of the analysis of automobile data. Among other things the new project is designed to help drivers to look for quickly empty seats on city streets.

The joint initiative of IBM and Ford received the name Smart Mobility Experimentation Platform (SMEP). It assumes use of tools of the analysis of Big Data of IBM within a cloud of the American company. The platform in real time is capable to process these each 10-15 seconds and to reveal patterns and trends in road situations with big accuracy.

The Ford Dynamic Shuttle service allows by means of the application for the smartphone to order a trip around the city on model ridesharing; the SMEP platform is the cornerstone of work of Dynamic Shuttle

Such analytics will find application in different automobile information systems which, for example, help to find empty parking spaces and provide building of an optimal route on the basis of traffic congestion. If the driver will not be able to reach to the destination for the necessary time, a system will offer options of alternative movement — for example, by bicycle; the closest points of bicycle rental in the city will be shown to the user.

According to the Chief information officer of Ford Rich Streyder (Rich Strader), SMEP collects and processes large volumes of data to facilitate to people regular movement on the city.

SMEP will be used in the GoPark Painless Parking project within which Ford aims to simplify search of parking lots. The technology will analyze information from the cars leaving the parking or stopping on it in a certain zone to predict existence of empty seats there. For forecast accuracy different parameters, including time of day, coordinates of location of the machine and data arriving from the various city systems will be considered. The GoPark Painless Parking service is going to be implemented in the form of mobile application.

IBM reported that the SMEP platform already formed the basis of service of short-term lease of cars for city trips of Dynamic Shuttle which Ford began to test in the city of Dearborn (the State of Michigan, the USA) in 2015.^[1]

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