Interview with Stef Kolman (OpenCarData)
During the Summit, Digital Pioneers will present their projects and ideas every hour in the Hall of Trouw Amsterdam. On Thursday 28 October 15.15 hrs Stef and Selene Kolman will tell us all about networked cars and their project OpenCarData, which has recently received the Living Lab Prize in de European Satellite Navigation Competition! We interviewed Stef shortly about himself, the project, the award and the competition he will launch tomorrow…
- How and why did you start OpenCarData?
“Back in 2002 we did a study for The Netherlands Media Art Institute regarding the technical, economical and cultural implications of our cars evolving into networked devices like computers, printers, etcetera. The Opencardata tagline – Reinventing the Wheel – really says it all. Our cars – uniquely – have not been touched by the revolution that has shifted reality in the rest of the world: internet. Technologically the basics date back to the original invention of the gasoline combustion engine by Daimler & Maybach in 1889! Sadly our cars today are still isolated data-deposits waiting to be excavated. Opencardata wants to make a start to network our cars because we believe it will make them smarter”.
- What can we do with OpenCarData?
“Opencardata collects, stores and disseminates – real world – OBD-II auto-data. OBD (On Board Diagnostics) is a universal car computer system – built into vehicles from 1996 onwards – to monitor the performance of our cars. As such Opencardata is a real-time health check of an individual car or our entire global fleet. We provide software and an API to encourage developers to create custom OBD-II applications and management tools.
We have started with one particular application ourselves that we call EmissionProfiles. In contrast with the European Union legislation for car energy labelling, EmissionProfiles render a vehicles’ real-world carbon emission on location. … but many more useful, playful or economical applications can be envisioned and we hope that the development community will get excited by this new data-source”.
- How does OpenCarData stimulates social innovation?
“We believe that the stakeholders in Opencardata are diverse and many: drivers, owners, manufacturers, repairers, governments, telecoms, etc. All of them will gain different knowledge and advantage by tapping into this new data-set. Just to mention some examples:
- driver communities may be helped by knowing which make/model/year car shows particular faults or needs typical repair, which will affect purchase decisions.
- (local) governments have access to real-world, real-time aggregated pollution data and can (re-)plan infrastructure around this.
- fleet managers may steer their employee drivers towards eco friendly driving styles so that each driver individually can help reduce the global carbon footprint
- manufacturers have location-based aggregated performance data to analyse… etc etc … the use cases are limitless.
But what’s most relevant is this: once the community grows, every one has access to a data-set that simply did not exist before. Each person can create automotive solutions based on his own innovations. This may fundamentally shift our automobility”.
- What does it mean to win the Living Lab Prize in de European Satellite Navigation Competition?
“The Galileo Masters is the annual most prestigious European Satellite Navigation Competition. The GNSS Living Lab Prize that we won is a special topic prize within the Galileo Masters and allows us to validate our innovation in a Living Lab reality check. The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) is a community of Living Labs with a sustainable strategy for enhancing innovation on a systematic basis. The overall objective is to contribute to the creation of a dynamic European innovation system. ENoLL aims to support co-creative, human-centric and user-driven research, development and innovation in order to better cater for people’s needs. Winning this prize will help us to improve the innovation and to bring it to the market”.
- What are you going to do at the State of Social Media Summit
“We will demonstrate the EmissionProfiles application. Summit visitors will be invited to drive one lap – in a car equipped with Opencardata Technology – and compete who can emit the least amount of CO2 during the lap. This playful competition will – we think – inspire people to be aware of their driving style and motivate them towards making change”.
Meet Stef and Selene at the Summit and go for I ride to test the software yourself and win some great prizes yourself!
- Register for the Summit
- More info about the presentations
Image: OpenCarData.
