Gadgetory

okay so Linus covered a number of features for BMW that were going to be enabled through something called the open mobility cloud and his sculpture phase video but I I am going to try it in real life Brad and I went on a wonderful drive with a prototype BMW 5-series connected car when first getting into the car it automatically syncs your calendars shopping accounts entertainment and even the schedules and locations of your friends by accessing the open mobility cloud or OMC this will let your car automatically plan your navigation and list your schedule for the day on your dash along with a few other things that we will discuss in more detail in a moment once you start driving a lot of monitoring and management is happening behind the scenes if you receive a text asking you to meet up OMC will scan the message find the meaning of the message and then ask you if you want to accept the invitation if you do so it will add it to your calendar and plan your navigation accordingly at the same time OMC will be giving you information about the duration of red or green lights in front of you so you know if you need to wave and for how long it does this based on a database of information on all of the red lights in your city that is gathered through working with the city and the observations of various other connected cars from both BMW and other OEMs but moving into the backseat for a moment there's a passenger that was watching a movie last night on Amazon video but went to bed partway through OMC knows this and offers to keep playing it for them from where they left off when they accept OMC puts the car into a cinematic mode changing the ambient lighting and putting up a screen in the back window to lower display glare now this this was super cool we entered something called convoy mode in this mode you can set your car to automatically follow the car of a friend of yours in front of you then you're free to do whatever you'd like as the car drives itself this was the first time that Brandon or I had experienced automated driving and man it is a wild feeling while the car is driving itself it's constantly checking for street signs that will display speed limits or Road information that will help it along the way it will sync this information with other connected cars so that they can all move around safer and more in formed if it encounter something unexpected it will take itself out of automated driving mode and let you take back control it achieves this awesomeness through a mixture of cameras ultrasonic sensors radar and an HD map along with their ever-evolving OMC data while it's doing all of that epic information juggling you are free to sit back and hang out I'd suggest even taking their gesture controls for a spin pointing your thumb to the left or the right will give you context information about landmarks that are around you pointing at the screen will have that information read out to you and swiping your hand will well you guessed it swipe it away you can even use the built-in Cortana functionality by pressing the speech button on the steering wheel and doing something like asking for dinner recommendations it will automatically suggest some restaurants based on your preferences and reserved seats for you if you tell Cortana a time that matches up with your already existing dinner plans it will intelligently pick the right amount of seats and update that calendar entry accordingly and of course that goes along with updating your navigation plans that you can get there on time speaking of navigation if you forgot a gift for your dinner date you could order one on Amazon now and the open mobility cloud would automatically optimize your pickup location based on your current location and the path that you will be taking for the rest of your drive in doing this it will make sure that it is as little out of your way as possible through a system called BMW connected on route delivery once you arrive your car will have a good sense of where you can park due to the real-time on street parking information that it has been gathering through OMC this whole time and on arrival there could even be a little robot valets you can just get out of your car the robot could show your car where to park and then the car would park itself that's pretty wild