Ford Engineers Trial Robotic Technology to Improve Car Communication
Engineers from the carmaker Ford have come together with engineers from the St Petersburg State Polytechnic University, to design a prototype system that will efficiently enable vehicles to communicate with each other via the cloud.
The technology being used was originally developed to help communicate with robots in space. Now, it’s believed that it could bring about some fantastic improvements in car communications.
The technology includes a software tool that enables vehicles to choose from the strongest wireless connections available. This could be several things; Wi-Fi, mobile phone, or direct communication with other vehicles. This allows data to be transmitted to the cloud. This ‘intelligent connectivity manager’ is thought to be useful when connectivity conditions are not so good.
The Aim & Method?
The aim of the trial is to combat the unreliability of data transmission in vehicles when they are on the move. They want to do this by dynamically shifting access to the cloud through a reliable transmission method – such as those we mentioned earlier.
To test their theory, the research team looked into sharing information about a road emergency with drivers who were in an area with bad connectivity. The scenario involved a car entering a tunnel and experiencing black ice – they then needed to send a signal warning other drivers of the icy conditions. Although they have no cellular reception – another car exiting in the other direction has both connection and vehicle to vehicle.
The intelligent connectivity manager will when select the other cars vehicle to vehicle channel in order to send information gathered from the first car. This will be sent to the cloud to send out a warning to other drivers about the dangerous tunnel conditions.
In the off chance that no other cars are actually around – it will send the message when the first car reaches an area in which there is a network available.
The Future?
The engineering team know that they face a lot of challenges whilst researching this technology. However, they believe that the first results are extremely promising in terms of offering reliable communications technology.
The solutions developed are thought to be of high reliability, scalability and adaptability.
We’re just as excited to hear about how this technology is going to change the future of vehicle to vehicle communication. Keep checking back as we will be keeping up to date with the latest on this story.
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