A few high-end cars already come with technology that will issue a warning—or even brake automatically—if the dashboard computer thinks a crash is imminent. Now, for those of us who can't afford this luxury extra, there's a smart-phone app that aims to do something similar.

iOnRoad for Android detect and tracks cars on the road ahead using a phone's camera and machine vision software. It also draws on a phone's GPS, accelerometer, and orientation sensors to calculate the distance to other cars, and the speed at which they are traveling.

Just place your device in a mount on the dashboard and start up the app. Then your phone will diligently watch the road ahead, and beep a warning if you get too close to the vehicle ahead, alerting you to hastily brake before any damage occurs.

iOnRoad is a clever idea, and it highlights just how powerful and capable smart phones have become. Just few years ago, such an app would struggle on the fastest smart phone.

In practice, however, I found it a bit distracting. During a drive to Cape Cod last week, with the phone mounted beneath the GPS, my windshield felt cluttered. I kept glancing at the phone whenever a car outline changed from green to yellow (depending on how close I was), in addition to checking the GPS. With continued use of the app my eyes would probably stop drifting over to check how far away each vehicle was. Thankfully, I didn't get into any near-collisions, and the road was pretty traffic-free.

The app can also work in background mode, so it'll only sound and show a warning if it detects an imminent collision. So iOnRoad could run behind a GPS app while driving.

The Israeli company behind the app, Picitup, has previously created vision recognition software for to automatically cataloging products (which eBay uses). At first, iOnRoad will be free; and it will be available next month.

The app is programmed to beep if the user is tailgating (at speeds over 10 mph) or if it detects the user is under .7 seconds from crashing (with an accuracy of .1 to .2 seconds). It also has night vision mode, though I wonder how well it could make out cars in foggy or snowy conditions.

"I think early warning systems are likely to take the same track [as GPS]," Alon Atsmon, CEO of Picitup. "It starts in high-end cars and moves into dedicated devices and smart phones."

He may be right, and overall I think this type of technology could help save lives. But I can't help wondering if the proliferation of collision-avoidance technology might also breed less careful drivers.

Images courtesy of Picitup

For years, people have been predicting that speech recognition will soon be the primary way we interact with computers, but it's never really taken off. Speaking at Blur, a conference in Orlando, Gary Clayton, chief creative officer at voice-recognition company Nuance, talked about what's still holding the technology back and why he thinks everything's about to change.

People will always want to use whatever interface is fastest and most convenient, Clayton said. On the desktop, it's still hard to beat the keyboard. In a mobile device, however, especially in a distracted situation such as driving, there's finally a real need for an alternative way to input information. Clayton said he felt the environment shifting when he realized that dictation was the best way for him to send an e-mail from a smart phone.

"Speech does three things really well," Clayton said, listing "command and control," "dictation," and "search." All three applications are useful when driving, he noted, and cars could be the place where the technology really takes off. As far as Clayton is concerned, voice recognition software is more than accurate enough to handle this already. But many in the audience expressed skepticism based on problems with what they've seen make its way into cars so far--think GPS devices with frustrating user interfaces.

Clayton acknowledged that there are still problems with many commercial voice recognition systems, and said many of them come down to issues with hardware and design. "These should be baked into cars, with frequent updates, as part of the dashboard," Clayton said.

Another problem is that many voice recognition systems require the user to push a button before speaking. This is necessary to preserve battery life, but Clayton says, "If you have to push a button, it's already broken."

Once problems like this are resolved, he believes voice recognition can finally take the primary role that's been a long time coming.

Never mind faulty electronic accelerators--researchers have now shown how to hijack a car's electronic system, overriding the driver's control over both its brakes and engine.

The recent controversy concerning flaws in Toyota's electronic throttle systems shows how serious the results can be when the embedded systems in automobiles go awry. Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California San Diego are now looking at what can happen when those systems are attacked maliciously.

These efforts are described in a report from the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security, a new research center formed to explore emerging automotive technology. The work will be presented next week at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, CA. The researchers say that, assuming an attacker has physical access to the interior of the car they studied, she could take control of many of its computerized systems.

The researchers write:

In live road tests, we were able to forcibly and completely disengage the brakes while driving, making it difficult for the driver to stop. Conversely, we were able to forcibly activate the brakes, lurching the driver forward and causing the car to stop suddenly. We were also able to control the lighting within the cabin, the external lighting, the vehicle's dash, and so on.

The researchers tested two makes and models of modern cars, but they expect the security problems they found will affect other vehicles.

They emphasize that car owners shouldn't be alarmed, however, because the attacks require physical access to the interior of a vehicle. Their main concern is a growing trend in the automotive industry to fit automobiles with external wireless connections. Just as security problems in desktop computers became more significant with the advent of broadband, network-connected cars could be a bigger target, the researchers say.