Prior to the Connected Car Expo more than 100 developers from around California coded apps for connected cars on the open Mojio platform during a hackathon. The winners include apps that help deal with earthquakes, potholes and promote better driving habits.
Judges from Mojio, Bosch and AT&T reviewed demos from more than 15 teams on Sunday afternoon. The winners for the “Best Connected Car Applications” were:
1st Prize ($5,000): Pipcar. This 3-person team built an emergency response application with multiple user interfaces that harnesses Mojio’s connected car platform to identify vehicles (and their drivers/passengers) that are in distress or in need of assistance. The app aims to help emergency services selectively communicate with the most high-risk vehicles and help them return to safety. This application was designed specifically to help drivers in California deal with a natural disaster, such as an earthquake.
2nd Prize ($2,500): Drive Quality. Two brothers hope to solve the never-ending problem of potholes and poor road conditions in LA and other cities around the world. They combined locational and behavioral data from Mojio’s open platform with audio technology from Plantronics to create an application that not only identifies and aggregates information about poor road conditions, potholes and vehicular accidents, but also provides a recommendation for the smoothest (not just the fastest) route to your destination.
3rd Prize ($1,000): Driving Buddy. Farn-Yu built a connected car application to help drivers improve driving behavior, increase fuel efficiency and become more aware of other connected vehicles around them by using an intuitive audio-only notifications system. Driving Buddy automatically opens and starts to run after Mojio recognizes that the ignition of the driver’s vehicle has been started.
Bosch’s Best Automotive Safety App ($2,500) was also awarded to Driving Buddy for the app’s innovative use of voice technology to limit driver distraction and enhance road safety.