Ford Smart Mobility

2018: Ford purchased two developer startups of services of "smart" mobility

Since 2018, the division of "smart" mobility of Ford Motor Company takes actions for acceleration of providing products and services of mobility to clients and increase in profitability of the company. This year Ford stirs up activity in the following areas: development of "operating system" for transport infrastructure of Transportation Mobility Cloud, providing a podklyuchennost of personal cars, corporate vehicle fleets and city dwellers to digital services and the Internet; ridesharing (Chariot service), not emergency delivery of patients in medical institutions; service of digital control by vehicle fleet for owners of commercial transport.

For accomplishment of effective objectives of Ford performed transactions on acquisition of two hi-tech companies having examination in the field of software development for the transport industry. The Autonomic company in Palo Alto (California) specializes in architecture and scalability of solutions for transport infrastructure. Its experience will help to implement quicker the "cloud" platform for services of mobility Transportation Mobility Cloud and to expand other key initiatives in the field of mobility, such as Chariot and service for not emergency delivery of patients in hospitals.

Ford also announces acquisition of TransLoc company (Durham, Northern Carolina), the supplier of technology of demand management for microtransit solutions which are owned by the city. Purchase of TransLoc will strengthen examination of Ford in the field of operational management and providing solutions on optimization of traffic flows for the cities using dynamic relaying of routes.

2015: Ford и IBM

The companies Ford and IBM at the end of 2015 joint work over the pilot platform which will allow to distinguish patterns, to reveal correlations and trends, helping consumers to make more effective decisions during the movement, for example, to find empty seats on the crowded parking or to receive timely hints about need of change of the type of transport in case of formation of an unexpected stopper.

The experimental Smart Mobility platform allows scientists-researchers of Ford to study the small portions of data which are saved up, for example, in 10-15 seconds for identification of trends and patterns in a system behavior. Being based on these data, scientists will be able to write and optimize the code. The platform uses means of the analysis of the stream data arriving through the IBM Cloud platform for permanent updating of the general model. The platform acts as that intelligent mechanism which is the cornerstone of the services of the parking and group trips developed in Ford.

The technology used by Ford and IBM is similar to the technologies applied, for example, in the stock market where fast aggregation of huge amounts of data allows to perform instant transactions or in the energy sector where operators of power supply systems monitor work of networks and reveal the most convenient intervals for scheduled maintenance and at achievement of certain indicators in the automatic mode appoint departure of repair crews.

"The experimental Ford Smart Mobility platform allows to collect huge information volumes and to break them into small parts, helping to provide to consumers the improved experience of movement — Rich Strader, the corporate and new information technologies director of Ford noted.

In 2015 the service of group trips Dynamic Shuttle in which the minibuses Ford Transit for transportation of staff of the company in Michigan are used was announced. In case of a malfunction any of minibuses the warning signal works, and the platform begins to redirect requests from this minibus to other cars connected to service thanks to what in run there are additional machines, providing timely delivery of passengers to the destination.

A system allows to use the analytical data arriving in real time to tell users what type of transport will be most preferable in this or that situation. In particular, the cloud platform allows Ford to analyze data streams from the different systems and, for example, to debug work of the subway. In this case, the passengers using the subway will be able to get advice to use bicycle in time to appear on the right place, explained in the company.

Within the corporate experiment of "the trouble-free parking" of GoPark Painless Parking the Ford company uses technology of forecasting of parking space. Having secured with permission from participants, Ford will collect the arriving data from the cars parking or leaving the parking in in advance designated space for forecasting of places, available to the parking. Forecasts are under construction based on public city data and also taking into account the observed patterns, for example, of dependence on time of day or the place.

When the driver looks for an empty seat for the parking, the technology will be able to prompt to it about availability of parking spaces where it is possible to park without violations of traffic regulations. It will allow the driver not to spend time and fuel in search of the space permitted for the parking. At the same time mobile application will include the function checking observance of traffic regulations concerning the parking. Such functionality will promote implementation of city initiatives in the field of the organization of city parkings and will actually act as a crucial element of new strategy of "the smart city", consider in Ford.

Revealing patterns, the platform will be able to direct the driver to made parking space. For example, when the buyer leaves shop, gets into the car and turns on ignition - it is the first characteristic element of a pattern. Several seconds later the car hands over back and leaves parking space - it is the second element. At this moment the broadband message which then can be transferred to other drivers driving on the parking with the purpose to park the car gets poisoned. In addition to information on availability of the parking space, its exact coordinates can be also transferred in the message.

Implementation of new level of work with data and analytical opportunities, along with support of networks, mobility, unmanned vehicles and ensuring optimal consumer experience, is a cornerstone for the Ford Smart Mobility platform — in it and the plan of Ford to help the world to change movement methods consists, emphasized in the company.