A Real-World Implementation of IoT Automobiles

Modern automobiles have many built-in sensors and electronic control units responsible for increasing safety, optimizing performance and improving occupant comfort. Along with this well-established uses of computing devices inside automobiles, there are two main research directions in further computerization of automobiles. One direction is aimed at creating vehicles that communicate with road infrastructure and other vehicles in ad hoc manner forming vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). The other research direction is expected to produce self-driving automobiles that can drive safely on the safe road together with regular automobiles. The research presented in this paper is focused on making regular automobiles connected to the Internet and thus becoming a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), with some motivating applications under consideration. In this paper a developed general architecture that enables automobiles to communicate with user applications by the help of an axillary computational infrastructure is presented and elaborated. A prototype based on the proposed architecture has been developed by putting embedded system inside an automobile. The developed system is supported by a suitable software and infrastructure that have also been developed as a part of the research. Driving tests with the prototype on real roads confirmed that proposed approach is feasible