File this under the category of “I don’t get it”. Yamaha Motor has received a global ‘iF Design Award” for an app called the “Rev Translator” that is said to be the first smartphone application to translate the sounds of an engine. Okay, initially that sounds kind of cool. Perhaps you simply hold the smartphone near the bike and it does a diagnostic test based on what it hears. Kind of like a code reader that doesn’t need to be plugged in. But then I read further…..
It seems that the Rev Translator has six different “personalities” and can “talk” to you with over 100 million lines of dialogue with comments dependent on its mood, what it hears, the time of day and the weather. So it seems that sometime during the ride it might say to you “Hey bub, you put on a few pounds? We been riding for hours, it’s hot, I need some gas and from what I just heard someone else already has gas.”
Fortunately the Rev Translator is only intended to work with the new YZF-R1. But that introduces another possible problem. Yamaha’s “I was built to surpass you” riding robot, Motobot, rides an R1. Is this app going to plug into him providing six personalities and accompanying “moods”?
Hmmm, I think I saw a movie like that once.
