How Ford Tests its F150 (& uses Men from Craigslist)

From inside the factory – how Ford tests its F150 pickup truck before putting it into final production.

From the robots to the dynos, actually Ford’s toughest test involves men it hired off Craigslist – the ‘Big Man Test’.

Read it online at Autonet.

Favourite line:

One of the toughest tests Ford has created doesn’t involve robots, or any tech at all. Instead they used 6’7″ 300 lbs men they hired from Craigslist, and called it the “Big Man Test”.

Fun fact: Ford’s PR team said this is the first time the ‘Big Man Test’ story has ever been published in Canada.

YES to my story finding skills.

***

From when I travelled with Ford to their proving grounds and factory last week.

Torque test.

Seat test for rattles.

That’s Mark, a 165 lb fake-human.

The tests run 24/7 for days.

There are robots everywhere.

This robot tests the fabric wear on the seats.

Back to ‘Keri on Driving’ – Index

 

 

Day 2 of Ford’s Trend Conference #FordTrends

Great day, because I learned a lot from some great speakers who I wouldn’t usually get to see.

I’ll tell you more in-depth in the coming weeks, but it was a day filled with two of my favourite topics:

1 – Pattern Recognition

2 – The Mind

Even got to try out a MindFlex for the first time!  I blogged about this game forever ago, hang on I’ll grab the link…. here: February 2011.

It’s a game that uses thought-controlled computing.

The object is: the more you focus and concentrate, the higher the ball raises.

I was a natural, obviously.

Found lots of fodder to make new blog headers.

I toured the testing facility, which I’ll tell you about in next week’s column.

There were ROBOTS.

And Ford’s all-new Edge made its world debut.

And I really need to invest in another dress(es).

Track time tomorrow!

Then flying out late afternoon, and the end.

 

 

This Robot is Brute-Forcing an iPhone

The robot will try all possible 4-digit passwords on an iPhone.

Seen at Black Hat 2013.

Best Use I Can See

It’s not elegant, but it would work. Grab a phone off the street, return to a secure location, put it under the robot, wait.

You’d need a location though, and time. And it’d be a targeted attack; you’d be after the information on the phone, not the phone itself. Otherwise, just wipe it.

Defences

– turn OFF simple passcode. Then you can have a longer passcode, with alphanumeric characters
– turn ON “after 10 failed password attempts this iPhone will wipe itself”
– don’t use any of these – Most Common iPhone Passwords
– hang onto your phone tight, but not like this this

Sorry, that’s all I know; saw it en route to the car hacking talk.

So if this robot belongs to you, email me and I’ll link you up, and any explanation you’d like to add.

 

 

Favourite Autonet Articles I Recently Wrote

Some of my neater topics of recent news stories. Click through to read the story.

Here’s my Autonet.ca news section, updates with 3 articles/week.

In 1998, LA Magazine predicts what cars will be like today, and they got a lot right.

 

Volvo’s trying to make a car smell like nothing, because that delicious “new car smell” is actually, low level emissions from the materials.

 

Nissan designs robots to behave like schools of fish, then uses them for autonomous car research.

 

Google chooses Volkswagon as its first-ever automotive parnter / collaborator.