AIDA The Dashboard Bot

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQLyjwskQo]

In an attempt to create more interaction with our vehicles, researchers have created AIDA. AIDA is basically a car computer and GPS that has some well designed personification. That cute little face will learn your daily habits and schedules and make recommendations to keep you out of traffic. We really like the idea, and the little bit we see of AIDA already has us falling in love, but won’t the placement be a distraction? We already know some people who give their car a name and treat it like a person, we don’t want to imagine what would happen if their car actually had some interactive personality. AIDA’s motion and emotive display are worthy of the crabfu challenge for sure, but do we want AIDA on our dashboard? Yes, most emphatically. She can sit right by the little hula girl.

 

[via BotJunkie]

 

 

10 thoughts on “AIDA The Dashboard Bot

  1. Yes… but does it run linux? can I add my own programmed behaviors? can I integrate it with my music system? can I get it to stream last.fm? will it compare gas prices from each gas station along my route? can it integrate weather patterns into its routes? (ie not drive me into a hail storm)

    and most importantly…

    can I give it an awesome british butler accent?

  2. I sat in a previous version of this project (or perhaps a different but similar project.) At that time it was a BMW. It was cool enough, but felt basically like a very well integrated TomTom, nothing more. Yes it routes you automatically, but these are things I learn to do (probably faster) as a regular commuter. This would probably be helpful for out-of-towners as a straight-up GPS, but I don’t see it being useful as much more than that. Also, at the point when I saw it, it was basically a bunch of off-the-shelf hardware and software, retrofitted well into a nice car. Seemed like a waste of MIT grad students to me.

  3. @JimXugle

    The version I saw was running off two IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads running the latest Ubuntu release. It seemed like overkill to me, and I was also surprised to see that the computers (which were running the voice recognition, maps, UI, etc and were interfacing with the car computer via OBD-II or something of the like) were both apparently running X with Gnome… I would think that all of the systems would have done just fine on one laptop, probably without a UI. Then again, they may have been using X to draw the UI they were displaying on the in-dash monitor.

  4. After one week – After two weeks – After a month –

    After a month I’d know my way around! I know when I need fuel, I also know when need to go shopping. If I wasn’t sure when I needed to go shopping, I’d rather hear it from my fridge or cupboards, not my car!

    Looks nice and cool, but practical? NOot on your nelly!

  5. Funny enough, a Playstation game series called .//hack features an AI enemy called AIDA that siphons human souls interacting with a virtual world…I may just steer clear of this for a while.

  6. Luckily I have a brain and can make my own desitions on which way I want to drive. Why is so much technology aiming to make us stop thinking. I would probably get very anoyed by this robot and rip it out of the dashboard pretty soon. I hate when my car GPS just wont shut up if I drive another route then it suggests… :)

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