QNX wants cars to notify road authorities about potholes

The Canadian QNX, part of smartphone maker BlackBerry, is developing a technology that allows cars to automatically detect holes in the road and passes this information on to road authorities so that they can close the holes.

This should be made possible by equipping cars with sensors that detect holes in the road. This could be, for example, motion sensors that monitor the car in combination with a GPS chip to store the location. If several road users see a hole in the road in the same place, road authorities can use that information to close those holes.

The system does not yet exist, but QNX is working on it, Canada’s CTVNews writes. QNX is a supplier of automotive software and therefore has the opportunity to implement this. This is happening in a project called Project Ion, with which QNX wants to analyze data for various industries. Further details about the system of BlackBerry’s subsidiary are not yet available.

The idea isn’t entirely new: a few years ago, researchers at an Indian university tried to measure potholes using smartphones; that turned out to work reasonably well.