Car composes Kraftwerkian music

Mark Frauenfelder 5:03 pm Wed Sep 4, 2013

[Video Link] Tom Zimmerman is one of my favorite hacker/inventors. With over 40 patents awarded, Tom's the creator of the legendary virtual reality navigation device, the Data Glove, and has written a number of fun DIY projects for MAKE magazine. We invited Tom to participate in the Boing Boing Ingenuity: Data Driven hack day on August 17, 2013, and his creation, called Project: Autobahn, was awarded our coveted "Weirdest Hack" prize. He took home a gift basket from our friends at SpikenzieLabs, and a pair of Audeze audiophile headphones.

Project: Autobahn translates Ford OpenXC data generated by a Ford C-MAX, from acceleration data to gas mileage details, into MIDI data so the car "composes" and plays Kraftwerkian music that matches the driver's behavior. As Tom says in the video, the style of music the car generates could be used to provide feedback to the driver on how safely and efficiently she or he is operating the vehicle.

In the coming days, we'll post more videos of the other Data Driven award winners.

Boing Boing: Ingenuity in partnership with Ford C-Max.

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