We have a wide range of experience in information and communication systems for drivers and passengers.

A variety of tracking, security and alert messaging tasks are becoming commonplace, based upon a common infrastructure of GPS and Dead-reckoning for location and time, GSM for data communication, and occasionally WiFi networks for data intensive tasks. The same technologies can support new features. For example, some of our novel applications involve text messaging between vehicles, their owners, and business servers. We have vehicles in day-to-day use that can accept input for their navigation systems as destinations, routes or waypoints, either from other computers on the internet via the servers, or by a message sent from the owners handset. As more services become SMS-enabled, vehicles are able to do more on their owner’s behalf. An example of this is our vehicle that can pay its own congestion charge whenever it enters the Inner London zone within the charging period. The payment of parking charges is also becoming SMS-enabled in several countries.

Innovative features in other areas of vehicle information systems are being investigated with the aid of a Feasibility Study Smart Award (see photo of presentation below), covering route planning, navigation and information systems, and safety.

Some of the earlier work was described in:
Frank Stajano, Alan Jones, The Thinnest Of Clients: Controlling It All Via Cellphone. ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review, Volume 2, Number 4, October 1998.