Editor’s note: this is the final run in a three-part series on the Internet of Transportation Things. Part one showed how the IoTT is already in the electronics of modern trucks. Part two explored how fleet mobility is changing to more of a “plug and play” environment.
Remote diagnostics lays the foundation to predict future problems and program, or re-program as the case may be, trucks and engines over the airwaves, says Rich Glasmann, vice president of OEM strategy, sales and marketing for Omnitracs.
Imagine being able to remotely adjust engine parameters to decrease the maximum idle time as a truck enters California so as to comply with the state’s emission laws, or to adjust the governed speed when a truck travels through parts of Texas. Or imagine updating the electronic control units (ECU) in the engine and transmission and to change the way trucks operate according to topography and climate.
“You will be able to optimize for fuel economy in certain conditions,” he says. “A lot of those things are in the works today.” Glasmann spent 17 years at Navistar and three years at Volvo before joining Omnitracs. He predicts that all of the examples above could become reality within three years.
Close relationships between OEMs and telematics providers are necessary to make this happen. This is where the Internet of Transportation Things becomes really interesting, as the future model of mobile computing will be very different than what it used to be where carriers were limited to using the hardware, software and wireless communications from a single provider.
Omnitracs as well as other providers will become “hardware agnostic,” he says, meaning that they will develop software to be compatible with a number of third party telematics devices and display options.
