Meet CarDroid, the device that wants to make your dumb car smart

Cars are getting smarter all the time, but upgrading often enough to get the most out of each of those advances is something that’s beyond the reach of all but the world’s richest people. Surely then it would make sense to have a relatively device that makes your car smart just by plugging it in.

Well that’s exactly what CarDroid, a new device by Canadian company UonMap, aims to do.

Running Android OS, CarDroid is an all-sufficient computer which analyzes vehicle data and driver’s behavior and sends the information to a personal cloud account.

While CarDroid won’t make your average car autonomous, it does have a number of interesting features, including the ability to notify your family if you’ve been in an accident.

If you are in an accident, you’ll also be able to see a 3D model of a car’s motion path during the accident in your online account. With the help of this 3D model you can reconstruct the situation and analyze driver’s actions at the moment of accident.

Other features allow you to monitor your own vehicle, with facilities to send a notification in case a car is hit while parked or is being towed away, driver’s behavior analysis, remote on-board diagnostics, trouble codes reading, and car location tracking.

The device is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter and is set to retail for around US$198.