Because roadside signage during a trip is not enough, Ford patented a new system which uses a vehicle's cameras to detect advertisements (on the road) and then display them on the car's screen.
Roadside billboards are an effective way to make a hungry driver want to stop at the next fast food, or to convince him to get off the road and visit a nearby commercial center for a discount at Nike.
What is excessive in billboards is providing extra information such as a phone number, address or a website, as they are often not visible to a driver or passenger. Who can memorize such details while driving?
This is the problem that Ford is trying to solve with this new patented system.
Many vehicles now come standard with built-in cameras used for autonomous driving, safety or to provide the driver with an out-of-vehicle view to facilitate parking.
What Ford wants to do is leverage these cameras to collect the information from the billboards and then use image recognition to display a copy of advertisings on the screens of a vehicle. So it will be visible to the driver and passengers for a longer period of time.
The system will also intelligently analyze the contents of the sign and create links, either for the easy dialing of a phone number, or for the display of a company website.
Ford could also work with advertising agencies or companies responsible for billboards.
