Author: Eric Walz
In the near future, vehicles supporting 5G connectivity will be able to communicate with other vehicles, traffic cameras and other roadside sensors to alert drivers to dangers, such as pedestrians, cyclists or a object on the roadway that could be out of sight. of the driver.
Technology can dramatically increase safety, which is why automakers are working with telecommunications companies to test the technology in vehicles. The latest partnership is between Verizon and Japanese Nissan.
Verizon, Nissan’s research and advanced engineering team in North America and the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) in California have announced the completion of a successful research proof of concept that demonstrates how the data from the sensors of the vehicle and nearby infrastructure can be handled using Verizon’s wireless network. and communicated to vehicles to inform drivers of hazards in near real time.
The CCTA works to plan, fund and implement innovative transit programs in California to improve mobility.
The trial was conducted by Nissan’s research and advanced engineering team in Silicon Valley. It used Nissan’s proprietary telematics test platform to process data from vehicle and infrastructure sensors and send urgent notifications to the driver.
“Making inroads in products and technologies is at the heart of Nissan’s business,†said Maarten Sierhuis, Ph.D., vice president, Nissan Technical Center North America. “The successful development and piloting of this research technology reinforces our commitment to contribute to driver and passenger safety and the future of mobility. “
The technology tested is called vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communications. It allows vehicles to communicate with other nearby vehicles or with infrastructure such as traffic lights and cameras over low latency cellular networks.
The C-V2X is designed to provide vehicles with direct, low latency communications between other vehicles, road infrastructure and other road users without a cellular network subscription by operating in the designated 5.9 GHz spectrum.
Tests successfully used C-V2X communication to notify Nissan drivers of vulnerable pedestrians or oncoming traffic exiting visually obscured areas, such as intersections.
Suppose a driver approaches an intersection with a building on the corner that obscures the road and approaches traffic from the left. Using C-V2X communication technology, the vehicle approaching the intersection can communicate with a camera and receive an instruction group warning of approaching vehicles or cyclists who may be out of sight of the driver.
Trials in California tested a variety of vehicle and infrastructure-based sensor configurations to create a multi-view image of potential safety hazards beyond the line of sight of the vehicle and the driver.
The test used Verizon’s 5G Edge mobile computing platform with AWS wavelength and sensor data from Nissan vehicles and nearby infrastructure. The data was then processed at the edge of Verizon’s wireless network to reduce latency and communicated back through a cellular network to vehicles in near real time. In vehicles, Nissan’s Intelligent Shared World platform sent notifications to the driver on the dashboard.
“Communication between vehicles and the environment around them, or C-V2X, will be one of the most important transportation innovations of the connected and autonomous future of driving,†said TJ Fox, vice president senior industrial and automotive IoT, Verizon Business. “This proof of concept shows that state-of-the-art computing with Verizon’s cellular network can help alleviate the resource-intensive compute load of vehicles and public infrastructure – hosting their software platforms and processing data from their sensors for them – and can communicate data to the outdoors to potentially induce vital safety alerts or autonomous driving functions in the car, all essentially in real time. “
The next phase of the pilot, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) will validate the technology for its automated driving systems grant program, which includes testing in controlled public environments before a potential live deployment.
German automaker Audi launched a similar C-V2X program in Virginia last year in partnership with Qualcomm and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). The goal of the pilot in Virginia was to improve road safety in construction and construction areas. The worker was wearing special vests with built-in vehicle-to-pedestrian communication (V2P) technology that sent a warning to nearby Audi vehicles, which then alerted drivers to their presence.
C-V2X communications operate on the designated 5.9 GHz Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) spectrum which has been reassigned by the FCC specifically for Connected Vehicle Technologies and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) .
For automakers like Nissan who are considering adding C-V2X communication technology to their vehicles, it is necessary to work with industry partners like Verizon as the infrastructure to support C-V2X communications Advances must be in place and thoroughly tested prior to vehicle deployment. .
