(Image Credit: TomTom)

We might be entering the era of driverless cars, but for the time being the majority of us will remain in control which means the only errors we can blame are our own. This is where TomTom wants to step-in and help prevent our human mistakes from occuring with an innovative connected car application.

TomTom's system allows for a more-detailed look at driving performance

Dubbed TomTom CURFER, the new technology provides real-time feedback on the...

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For every person at the automotive manufacturer, advertising agency or a technology partner supporting the customer experience, one question remains unanswered when discussing the value proposition of connected cars: How can we maximise the use of the data being transmitted from the vehicle?

It makes sense to ask. As cars become integrated into broader Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems of mobile devices and connected products, they will not only begin to...

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The connected car is the focus of a lot of speculation about uses for contextual data feeds. The visions are exciting, whether of helmet-mounted cyclist beacons or biometric apps to stop drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

But they derive from car makers without a long track record in the kind of human-centred thinking that constitutes best practice in interaction design. Or they come from technology companies whose over-riding ambition is to transplant their operating...

Visa, Pizza Hut and Accenture are to collaborate on a proof-of-concept connected car that will be used to test commerce possibilities when drivers are out and about.

The concept will bring together several technologies, including Visa Checkout, mobile connectivity, Bluetooth and iBeacon, so that staff will be alerted when a customer has arrived to collect their pizza.

Takeaway food might be the initial focus of the tests, but the trio of companies have visions of their technology being adopted for everyday...

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The Hella group has released details of a new system called the Intelligent Damage Detection System that is capable of detecting scratches and dents as they happen.

Depending on the specification, anything from two to 12 sensors are positioned through a car’s body panels. A central control panel is able to detect a pressure being applied to the panel and then decide whether it is rain or something far less innocuous like a scratch.

Ford has put the finishing touches on an agreement that will see it supply driverless vehicles to the UK government-backed Autodrive initiative.

During 2015 Ford will hand over two prototype cars with vehicle-to-vehicle communication features to Autodrive that will help the organisations study the contribution driverless and connected cars can make to society.

Since the turn of the year Ford has come out all guns’ blazing with its investment in upcoming technologies. Just last month it unveiled a new...

Driverless vehicles are the talk of the automotive industry after busy CES and Detroit motor shows, but testing them in a safe environment, that can accurately replicate the challenges of road navigation, has been a challenge until now.

US education establishment, the University of Michigan, has released more information surrounding M-City, its ambitious project to create a detailed urban test area for driverless...

Back-seat drivers can be a real annoyance to drivers and Jaguar Land Rover appears to be drawing on this bothersome trait for its latest bicycle safety system.

Jaguar Land Rover has launched an array of new features to help reduce the 19,000 cyclists killed or injured on UK roads every year, with one solution likely to prove divisive among drivers.

Bike Sense, Jaguar’s new system for cyclist detection, can detect when a bike is coming up the road behind the car. Depending on whether the cyclist...

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Looking at the recent news from some of the world’s biggest auto manufacturers, it is clear to see just how much progress has been made and how the connected car is revolutionising the in-car experience. At CES in January 2015, GM announced AtYourService, a suite of new OnStar services aimed at allowing retailers and other merchants to promote deals directly to drivers. These promotions include hotel...

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Personalisation is set to be the next significant hurdle for car manufacturers and Nuance thinks it has the perfect solution with a fresh new update to its Dragon Drive product.

In today’s economical era of car use, there is a high chance that one vehicle will have more than a single driver. In these cases, each specific driver will have their own preference for configuring different aspects of the car.

Rather than having to tweak a whole host of settings before a driver...

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Cyclists’ helmets may soon be able to communicate with cars if Volvo’s collaboration with sports gear manufacturer POC and Ericsson goes on general sale.

Working with the two companies, Volvo has developed a helmet prototype that is capable of communicating with a connected car to provide proximity alerts to driver and cyclists in a bid to prevent accidents from occurring.

Collisions between cars and cyclists is a global concern. In Europe, 50% of all cyclists...

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Smartwatches have only started hitting the mainstream consumer market this year, but German car manufacturer BMW is already coupling the technology with its vehicles.

BMW is dreaming of a world where people can get out of their car on the ground floor of a multi-story car park, tap their smartwatch and let the car drive through the levels to an available space on its own.

This technology currently only exists in the company’s BMW i3 research vehicle, equipped with the fully automated...

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Augmented reality has been seen in cars for the first time as part of Jaguar Land Rover’s new 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen research.

The car manufacturer has developed a new concept that completely reinvents traditional GPS navigation by projecting a ghost car in front of the driver to follow. The idea is to keep a driver’s eyes on the road and avoid the distractions that come with dash-mounted hardware.

Jaguar Land Rover has made the whole solution even more...

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German manufacturer Audi has announced Audi unite, a way for friends colleagues or neighbours to share the use of their car using an interactive app.

With the help of digital design house Kram/Weisshaar, Audi is hoping to give people a more economical way to use its cars. An app lets up to four drivers make car reservations, while a personalised beacon makes it possible for the vehicle to recognise each driver.

The app also communicates with the vehicle to show drivers the location of the...

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The idea of the digital supercomputer car has been around since the 80’s. Characters like Knight Rider’s K.I.T.T had the ability to learn, communicate and even connect with Michael Knight on some emotional level, not bad for a Pontiac Trans Am.

While in the 80’s it seemed that the reality of an intelligent car was only for the magic of television, today we not only have intelligent cars, but are heading towards a future where your car can be your personal...

Insurance telematics concerns could simply be sensationalised hyperbole if new research by LexisNexis rings true for the wider population.

The company’s 2014 Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) white paper revealed how consumers’ comfort levels surrounding the sharing of UBI driving data were on a similar level to other internet-related tasks such as online banking and social media.

In fact, both online search data and social media personal rated higher on the study’s concern scale than UBI driving...

Telecommunications company Huawei has announced that it will be investing heavily in future infrastructure technologies as it prepares for the era of autonomous cars. Fifth generation mobile internet (5G) has been discussed as a solution to the substantial bandwidth requirements that vehicles are likely to require when communicating with other road-based objects. In a recent article on the Financial Times, Huawei CEO Eric Xu, revealed that talks with car manufacturers were already on the agenda. However, the discussions must still be at an early stage as Xu failed to disclose any specifics. Bandwidth capacity There is a worry that even...

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AT&T’s innovation and research centre Drive Studio already has 12 companies signed up and now LG Electronics has joined the party.

LG is hoping to work with Studio to develop new services for future connected cars, with it focusing mostly on hardware and equipment rather than the software side that many are investing in.

Drive Studio has been built to help with the research and development of the connected car industry and includes working garage bays, a speech lab, a full...

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Smarter cars equate to more data being available on an owner’s driving habits, a notion not lost on US trade organisation the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers that has announced new guidelines to manage consumer anxiety.

In a statement released on the Alliance’s website, Mitch Bainwol, the body’s president and CEO, immediately set out to allay consumer concerns by explaining how important it was to be transparent about the features of connected...

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German car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) has announced a new partnership with Inrix, a move that offers a glimpse at the type of data drivers will have at their fingertips over the coming years.

Inrix, a big data company that specialises in traffic information, analytics and driver services for connected cars and smart cities worldwide, will be offering VW access to its Inrix Park and Inrix Fuel services.

VW intends to use the Inrix products in its new European Passat models...