Imagine a day when you're driving in a patch of heavy traffic, and your car -- sensing your elevated stress level -- automatically blocks all incoming cell-phone calls until the congestion dissipates.
Ford Motor Co. does.
The automaker sees the ever-increasing number of sensors, cameras and data-capture technologies in cars and trucks as the foundation for a future in which intelligent vehicles take an active role in preventing traffic accidents.
"Vehicle-control inputs, sensors, road conditions and biometric information such as a driver's pulse and breathing can all be used to create a driver-workload estimation that can then help manage certain functions in demanding situations," says Jeff Greenberg, senior technical leader of Ford Research and Innovation.
That includes "intelligently managing incoming communications" by analyzing data from driver-assist systems such as blind-spot radar sensors and lane-keeping cameras -- both of which are available on the 2013 Ford Fusion -- to determine the level of external demand on a driver at any given time, Ford says.
The data -- along with input from the driver's use of the throttle, brakes and steering wheel -- is plugged into an algorithm that produces a "driver-workload estimator," which could block incoming phone calls if the workload is high.
For example, a vehicle's side-looking blind-spot radar sensors and forward-looking lane-keeping camera could indicate that the lane into which a driver is merging contains heavy traffic.
Combined with the vehicle's awareness of the fact that the driver has increased the throttle-pedal pressure to speed up, the vehicle could determine that the driver workload is too high for incoming phone calls.
