General Motors Filed a Patent Application for a Navigation System That Knows When You Hate It

by Aaron Cole

Updated: December 21st, 2020

General Motors this month filed a patent application for a navigation system that can gauge how effective it is in ~~frustrating~~ guiding drivers based on their eye movements and how well those drivers follow directions.

The patent application filed Dec. 3 details a navigation system that watches “visual focus, the driver vocalizations and the driver emotions, along with vehicle system parameters from a data bus … to evaluate driver satisfaction with navigation guidance and determine driver behavior.”

“You missed our last turn, Aaron.”

I know, OnStar. We’re going off course.

“I don’t like how that sounds, Aaron.”

Take me to the nearest hole in the desert, OnStar.

According to the patent application, the system would use a driver-faced camera to track eye movement to see if the driver was paying attention to the road, looking elsewhere in the car or frantically searching for the nearest road sign.

Simultaneously, the system would use a forward-facing camera from the car to read nearby road signs to see if the driver’s eye movement picked up the last sign.

The systems would stitch together whether the driver was comfortable or hopelessly lost, and serve new directions appropriately.

The navigation system would also monitor the driver’s speech, perspiration and heart rate to determine just how pissed off you are now that you’re lost for the second time on the same stretch of road that it told you had construction, but clearly there’s no construction on this road.

Seriously, OnStar. You do this to me all the time!

Thankfully, the patent application also details a location-based “promotional offers for businesses near a destination or route of the driver,” to offer you a cookie at a nearby Arby’s to forget that it ever got you lost in the first place.

We reached out to General Motors for comment on the patent application but HAL can’t be bothered right now.

H/T to Bozi for the heads up.

#Application #GeneralMotors #HAL #Navigation #OnStar #Patent

Aaron Cole

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11 of 36 comments

ClutchCarGo on Dec 08, 2015

Many posters here have argued at length about the numbing and dumbing of drivers by the inexorable march of auto tech, from automatic transmissions to ABS to ESC, but I maintain that the most serious abdication of drivers' accountability is the use of a nav system. How can you claim to be in control of the vehicle if you don't know where you're going, if you've surrendered the most basic aspect of travel to a disembodied voice that can't see what you can? I know that I'm an old fart that doesn't even own a smart phone, but come on, don't you know where you're trying to get to when you get in the car? And if you're going somewhere foreign, why wouldn't you look up the destination before you leave?

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- Drzhivago138 on Dec 08, 2015
  
  >but come on, don’t you know where you’re trying to get to when you get in the car? Where we're trying to get to, yes. The best way to get there--that may change en route. Whenever I go anywhere with my father, it seems like we always end up somewhere idiotic like I-94 just outside St. Paul at 5:00 on Friday before the 4th of July, and it's then that a smartphone or other nav device can tell you the absolute quickest way to get off the main road.
  
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- ClutchCarGo on Dec 08, 2015
  
  @Drzhivago138 I suppose if I drove a lot in a place like L.A. I would have to have Waze at hand, but whenever I cross Chicagoland or head out of state, I check traffic online just before I shove off to see if something unexpected has happened, and I can catch a live traffic report on the radio every 10 minutes once I'm rolling.
  
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- Bball40dtw on Dec 08, 2015
  
  Do not surrender but enhance and augment. I especially like in car nav for long trips. It gives me an estimated time to get to my destination (that I can race against!), and it can help me in re-route situations. I know where I am going, but having a 8" moving map in my vehicle is helpful when I-75 is $hit north of the US-10 split or on either side of I-475 in Flint.
  
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- Drzhivago138 on Dec 08, 2015
  
  @ClutchCarGo Not to say your method is wrong, but it wouldn't have worked in the aforementioned situation. We had been driving since noon from the Madison, WI area, and any radio traffic reports would've just said, "hey hey, it's bumper-to-bumper all the way to St. Cloud, back to you, Mike!" It was our own lack of foresight that we didn't immediately find the quickest route onto Hwy 10 as soon as we got into MN.
  
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- Turf3 on Dec 08, 2015
  
  I bet that if you put a piece of tape over the little compass readout on my mirror, and asked me at random times while driving what direction I am heading, I would outperform 99% of GPS-addicted millennials. If you learn how to read maps and place yourself on the surface of the earth in relation to the origin and destination of your trip, getting lost becomes a temporary item. If I know that my destination is northwest of me, and I am heading north, I know it's off to my left. If I miss a turn, or a road is closed, or turns out to be one way the wrong way, I can still understand where I am. If you want to drive like a trained monkey (now left! now right! now left! now right!) GPS is definitely the tool. "Hold on, hold, never mind about the distance; whereabouts does the castle lie? what's the direction from here?" "Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reason that the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore; wherefore the direction of its place abideth not, but is sometime under the one sky and anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that it is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space of half a circle, and the marvel happing again and yet again and still again, it will grive you that you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwart and bring to naught the will of Him that giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth Him, and if it please Him not, will the rather that even all castles and all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving the places wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning His creatures that where He will He will, and where He will not He - " "Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mind about the direction, hang the direction...have you got such a thing as a map of the region about you? Now a good map -" "Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt added thereto, doth - ?" ...
  
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- Drzhivago138 on Dec 08, 2015
  
  @turf3 https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/
  
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- Pragmatist on Dec 08, 2015
  
  Ever try to read street signs in a strange place at night? Ever need to see if you've missed a sign and need to find your way back? Having a computer (whether in car, phone, or on dash) is MUCH safer
  
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- ClutchCarGo on Dec 08, 2015
  
  @pragmatist Yes, and yes, but I've always managed to find my destination, although I will admit that my wife lacks my sense of adventure which has, at times, led to in-car disputes. But in this day of cell phones, a quick call will usually solve any problems encountered that can't be resolved by a second look. And yes, the car would be much safer in the garage, but that's not what a car is for.
  
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- WildcatMatt on Dec 29, 2015
  
  Thing is, even if you whip out the most recent Rand McNally before you hit the road, the nav app can help with the unexpected. Traffic has already been mentioned, but unexpected detours are another situation. I was headed up I-65 toward Chicago earlier this year when the northbound lanes were detoured due to a bridge failure. The posted detour took you miles out of the way, presumably to route truck traffic away from the small towns on the main highway. But Waze knew a shortcut that knocked 20 minutes off the official route. That's not insignificant.
  
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Lou_BC on Dec 08, 2015

Monitors eye movements okay...... perspiration? and what algorithm will accurately put that one to use? Is it tied into the AC and internal vehicle temperature? Heart rate...from where and how? That black box data will be real fun to apply in court post crash. Considering GM's ignition switch engineering......... is there an off switch?

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