Ford is expanding its presence in Silicon Valley. The automaker just opened its Research and Innovation Center Palo Alto in Stanford Research Park, and says the facility will focus primarily on mobility, connectivity and autonomous driving. As you can imagine, the lab is coming up with insane new technologies that future drivers can look forward to.
Ford hired Dragos Maciuca as its technical leader. The former Apple engineer has a background in consumer electronics and is no stranger to working for the automotive industry. Maciuca will lead the research and innovation center in its efforts to develop new technologies that will meet new customer wants and needs. Just a few of the lab's projects include:
Nest On-the-Road Home Energy & Safety Targeting
Staying connected to home while on the road is something that's become more and more important to consumers, and Ford's integration with Nest will offer the enhanced connectivity that many shoppers are looking for in this area. New technology will potentially enable communication between Ford vehicles and Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect systems, so drivers can manage their home energy use and alarm system settings while on the go.
Remote Vehicle Positioning Experiment
The Palo Alto team is currently testing out technology that would allow drivers to remotely control their vehicles, even ones thousands of miles away. With real-time video that's streamed using 4G LTE technology, the lab's California team is remotely "driving" golf carts that are located across the country at the Georgia Institute of Technology campus.
Improved Natural Speech Recognition
Ford eventually wants its speech recognition technology to be so good and all-encompassing that drivers will be able to adjust a vehicle's power seats simply by speaking to the infotainment system. Currently, researchers are testing out ways to use natural speech recognition and a tablet-like interface to enable drivers to control a multi-contour seat with over 10 adjustment settings.
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