okay so lineus covered a number of features for BMW that were going to be
enabled through something called the open Mobility cloud in his sculpture
phase video but I I am going to try it
in real life Brandon 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 wait and for how long it does this based
on a database of information on all of the red lights in your city that it's
gathered through working with the city and the observations of various other
connected cars from both BMW and other
OEM but moving to the back seat 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 limit 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
informed if it encounters 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 suest some restaurants based on your
preferences and reserve 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 realtime on street parking information
that it has been Gathering through OMC this whole time and on arrival there
could even be a little robot valet so 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