Besides attending Michigan Technology Leaders, I also dropped by the show floor of the Telematics Detroit 2009 show Tuesday.
The show seemed smaller than in recent years, but it's still a fascinating peek at the automotive electronics toys of tomorrow.
Probably the coolest thing I saw was something I wrote up yesterday -- UIE Automotive's myCar platform, which turns any smartphone into your own personal OnStar and navigation system.
Yep. You can remotely lock or unlock your car. Remotely start it. Flash the lights and sound the horn so you can find it in a parking lot or ramp. There's also tracking and viewing of the vehicle's current location, with geofencing and alerts.
The system also monitors the vehicle's condition, including maintenance reminders and history. And it offers a traffic conditions map and navigation, including directions, distanc,e time and average speed for a requested route. And the system offers area points of interest.
Michael Flaherty, director of product development at UIE's Clinton Township office, said the company is hoping the product can be underwritten by manufacturers so it can be free, or nearly so, to car buyers.
Elsewhere was the usual forest of flat panel screens for in-vehicle infotainment, controller buses and switches and lots and lots of pretty blinking lights.
Vince Woerdeman, field sales engineer for the Wixom office of Agilent Technologies, and application engineer Louann Devine were nice enough to walk this tech dolt through the paces of a whole bunch of really sweet lab gear used to test telematics creations.
The big question about all this cool stuff we can bring to cars is, of course, who pays. Whether it's an add-on to your cell phone bill and the data gets to your car on a cell phone signal, or whether it's an add-on to your Internet bill and it gets there through WiMax wireless Web transmission, somebody's gotta foot the bill, and there are still a whole bunch of business models up in the air.
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