Life Saving GPS, Looked into by Ford

Your life, saved from outer space

American manufacturer Ford, together with the Auburn University took it upon themselves to show us a new side to the now common GPS. The research conducted by the two has reportedly show that GPS cannot only show directions, but also can prevent accidents from occuring.

The research, whose results will be made public next week, at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics in San Antonio, Texas, showed GPS can talk to cars and act as an early warning system.

It can detect when a car is beginning to lose control and tells the vehicle's stability control and additional systems to prevent the car from rolling over.

"A satellite orbiting the earth could someday prevent an auto accident," Gerhard Schmidt, Ford's Chief Technical Officer said in a release. "We applaud the Auburn team for these advancements and look forward to working together on the next phase of this research, including developing prototype vehicles."

"Stability control is one of the most important safety technologies of this decade," Jeff Rupp, Ford Active Safety Systems Engineering manager added. "Ford is committed to safety leadership, and research partnerships like our work with Auburn help us achieve success."

The details of the research will be announced, as we said, next week, and the whole picture will be revealed then. Still, we can't but feel a bit disappointed by the findings announced so far. The vehicle's stability system is fully capable of handling the car without the help of the GPS.

What would have been interesting to see is GPS system which, while communicating with similar ones in other vehicles, could predict the trajectory of each car based on speed, direction and such, and prevent car vs. car collision altogether, for example. We hope Ford's findings are only the first step into that direction.