Exploride: A new futuristic dashboard for your car

One morning, Sunil Vallath was talking on the phone with his wife (then fiancée). Since they were in other countries at the time, it was common to talk over the phone.

Without warning, Vallath was suddenly thrust into a situation that haunts him to this day.

“It still gives me shivers to think of what could have happened if luck had run out on us that morning,” he said.

Parvathy, his bride to be, was in a car accident while they were talking. She was unharmed but it rocked Vallath to the core, causing him to draw on his technical background.

“The incident got the engineer in me thinking about a distraction free device that could help one stay connected without taking their eyes off the road,” said Vallath.

A technology capable of preventing these sorts of distractions behind the wheel? Could it be possible? A hands free device that could replace a smartphone yet still provide things like navigation and other multimedia?

In the United States in 2013, 3,154 people were killed in crashes involving distracted driving. Another 424,000 injuries were reported.

Often cited as the primary cause of distracted driving, the average time a person will spend with their eyes off the road while texting is 5 seconds. At 55mph that translates to the length of a football field.

Exploride is a transparent, distraction free, heads-up display. It gives a driver access to everything from navigation to infotainment through advanced gesture recognition and display technology.

Exploride can transfer information from a Bluetooth smartphone to the transparent display on the dashboard. Music, navigation, maps, calls, and even texts are controlled by either hand gestures or voice prompts.

Vallath has taken great care in assembling his team of engineers, developers, and designers for the inception of Exploride.

With backing from the Department of Science and Technology in India, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and angel investors, Exploride was able to secure a place in India’s budding Startup Village.

Exploride, to truly be distraction free, needed the best possible construction. Material composition was of the utmost importance. Something slender, strong, and able to process driver commands quickly and efficiently was vital.

“Building Exploride was a great challenge for us due to lack of supplies in India during our earlier stages,” Vallath recalled. “We had to import all the internal circuits from places like Israel and China for the first rounds of research and development.”

More challenges arrived.

“The next one was for us was to make the product lightweight, portable, and at the same time user friendly,” Vallath said. “We accomplished that by using unique measurements we gained through our research.”

Exploride also received insight from the greater automotive industry. Many automotive retailers provided customer requirements and specifications to Vallath and his team.

Eventually, things came together.

“Aesthetics were refined over multiple iterations to obtain the optimally compact and sleek design of Exploride,” Vallath said. “It’s robustly engineered and the hand-picked components give Exploride extreme durability too.”

Exploride’s top features include:

Stand-alone device

Mobile WiFi hotspot capability

Can function without a mobile phone

Built in dash camera with 16GB of internal storage

Maintains a connection to the vehicle’s stereo and OBDII system

Noise canceling technology for greater call clarity and uninterrupted voice commands

4 way hand gestures of UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT keep the driver easily in control while accessing Exploride

Detroit is like many busy, urban areas, especially in the morning. When I am home and not traveling for my work in the automotive industry, I am often downtown.

Usually, I give Danielle a ride to her office through a gauntlet of cars, transit buses, delivery trucks, construction vehicles, and pedestrians.

Near Woodward Avenue, especially with the ongoing construction, it can be quite difficult to navigate.

By now, it’s about 8:30am and my phone starts buzzing and dinging with calls, texts, and e-mails. I asked Vallath how Exploride might benefit me and the thousands of other individuals who are on similar morning commutes.

Vallath, who grew up in Kerala, India, says making Exploride a reliable product for customers is his focus. Vallath wants ongoing dialogue with them and seeks suggestions for changes that could make future versions of Exlporide more effective at reducing distracted driving.

Vallath likes to travel and is often found behind the wheel of a car – it’s a good place to be, especially as Exploride finds its purpose in an ever changing technological landscape.

More information regarding distracted driving can be found through the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their site details critical statistics on the subject, including the results of a 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

In addition, the US government maintains a detailed website on this matter.