Intel Working on Black Box for Your Car

At a series of press events last month, Intel demonstrated some of its auto-oriented technologies, including an event recorder, or so-called black box, which Congress is pushing as part of a piece of auto safety legislation inspired by the Toyota unintended acceleration issue. Intel sees such a black box as a natural part of its Connected Car research.


To show off how it works, Intel outfitted a Smart Fortwo with WiMax, the 4G wireless system that can provide high-speed data and Internet connections to anything that moves. As part of the system, Intel’s event recorder would be able to record basic telemetry of the vehicle and information like whether the seat belts were being used at the time of an accident, and a whole lot more.

“With new vehicles, there will very likely be video cameras inside and outside,” said Intel’s chief technology office, Justin Rattner, in an interview. “It’s not particularly new or stunning, but when you combine the cameras with GPS, you’re geo-tagging the video.” Essentially, the Intel event recorder would record 30 seconds or more of video and know exactly where and when an accident occurred.

While Mr. Rattner doesn’t expect the videos to be sent directly to insurance companies, they do make it easier for the police and insurance investigators to reconcile discrepancies in eyewitness accounts.

The event recorder would also be tied directly into a car’s existing computer control modules, so that investigators would know when or if the brakes were applied, for example, or if there was some mechanical malfunction. With sophisticated computer vision systems, the event recorder would also be possible to see what a traffic signal indicated at the time of impact or whether the driver ignored an important road sign, like driving the wrong way on an exit ramp.

Other applications could also be tied to the connected car, including remote start, the ability to report the position of potholes to local road crews and the ability to send a video of a car thief directly to the owner’s cellphone.

But just how much would such a fancy black box cost? Mr. Rattner said reports of such a device increasing a car’s cost by thousands of dollars were unrealistic, even though car event recorders could potentially be more sophisticated than airplane black boxes (which do not record video, for example).

“Most of the hardware costs will already be in these vehicles,” said Mr. Rattner, pointing out that drowsy driver warning systems and parking assist packages in luxury cars already deploy several video cameras. Within a few years these are likely to be standard features, with lower costs.

“Even in the aftermarket, I would be surprised if it cost more than a decent security system or navigation system in a few years,” he said. And we all know what’s happened to the price of navigation systems.