Jeffrey Miller, IEEE member and associate professor of engineering practice at the University of Southern California, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Three years ago, Nissan was the first car manufacturer to announce they would have driverless vehicles ready for consumer adoption by the year 2020. While consumers, and even some experts in the field, noted that this was an aggressive timeline, it didn't seem like an unattainable goal. Void of personal and professional opinions, this announcement did a great service for the driverless vehicle industry, promoting awareness of this emerging technology. Awareness is one of the most important elements in driving this industry forward — consumers aren't going to trust what they don't know, even if the technology has been validated.
In late August, IEEE —the world's largest professional organization of engineers — hosted a roundtable at the University of Southern California to discuss the current condition and future development of the autonomous vehicle industry. The roundtable featured experts from a variety of disciplines, including technology, policy/regulation and law, where we addressed comprehensive industry considerations.
Along with myself, the participants included:
Justin Pritchard — moderator; transportation reporter for the Associated Press
Wei-Bin Zhang — research engineer and a program manager for the California PATH Program and Institute of Transportation Studies of University of California at Berkeley
Bernard Soriano — deputy director, California Department of Motor Vehicles
Bryant Walker Smith — assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina
A new vision for "seeing" the world
One area that is continuing to grow and will play a large role in the further development of autonomous vehicles is Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications.
Currently, self-driving vehicles are guided by computer vision technology — whether it's Lidar/Ridar (laser or radar technology) or camera-based sensing — when operating on public roads. However, V2V and V2I are communication methods that will completely transform how vehicles will "see" the road and interact with its environment. Both V2V and V2I are dedicated short range communications (DSRC) devices that work in the 5.9GHz band, have a range of approximately 1000m and can support private data communications as well as public.
At the rate the industry is moving, we'll start to see V2V/V2I become integrated and tested in controlled settings within the next three to five years, but the technology will require constant evaluation before being available to consumers. Although driverless cars will be on the market by 2020, they will not be able to leverage V2V or V2I until a few years later. [5 Ways Self-Driving Cars Will Make You Love Commuting]
V2V and V2I communications will have large-scale benefits that reach beyond the vehicle. Such communication practices will allow for much safer travel by allowing vehicles to be in constant communication with each other as well as their environment, which will greatly reduce accidents and fatalities. Last May, the Associated Press reported on a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study that found traffic accidents cost the US $871 billion a year — these communication platforms can greatly reduce this number. As a result, traffic patterns and road congestion will also be aided and vehicles will be able to travel at a much faster rate of speed and eventually render traffic signals irrelevant.
Key to implementation will be a high penetration rate of vehicles able to communicate with each other. This will enable self-driving cars to access further data and information regarding their environment, and will work in harmony with already available sensing technology (radar or video cameras). For example, when a vehicle is coming up to a blind intersection, a vehicle in the perpendicular direction could alert other vehicles to whether it will be able to stop as a signal changes.
The next five years will be important in addressing concerns and barriers to the implementation of V2V and V2I. In August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a release that announced proposed rule-making and an initial analysis of V2V communication. The agency's primary concerns were technical feasibility, privacy/security, estimates of cost and safety benefits. Like driverless vehicles, communication standards will take some time to gain consumer trust, but eventually they will make their way into the mainstream to compliment the progress of this industry.
source : www.livescience.com
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