Gadgetory

the first layer of this cake is what you might call v2e vehicle to environment where vehicles use sensors not unlike these to figure out where they are and what's around them they're sort of on their own right now to read the world as they navigate it just count the array of sensors on Howdy's current self driver that uses v2e technology to handle its own driving up to a full 40 miles per hour let's count up some of the sensors that make an Audi autonomous car of the future autonomous first of all around the bumpers you've seen these before we've got these sensors here that do sonar for those pretty conventional back in these body panels hidden there are also radar devices that are doing the same thing we see in the front on radar now in the windshield camera actual optical camera that we've seen before ray domes left and right up here you might think those are fog lights they're not more sonar sensors here laser here is new in this technology demonstration that's not in production yet but this allows high bandwidth detailed 3d modeling of the shapes that are out in front of the car here's without II is done they've combined adaptive cruise control which maintains distance and speed ahead of you they've combined active lane departure which keeps a car in a lane using active steering and they've added very sophisticated rear sensing technology to monitor what's going on behind the vehicle put that together and you get complete perimeter awareness now in a pure v2e approach the vehicles responsible are making sense of a lot of data you can see on that screen behind me how the car sees me and that is not an easy bunch of bits to make sense of that puts a lot of processing power in the car and a lot of the past prototypes I've seen that computing power fills the trunk of a self-driving car but more recently I'm seeing it fill up maybe a space the size of a shoebox the next layer of self-driving is v2b vehicle to vehicle where cars report their position and trajectory to each other Ford recently showed us a very clear demo of how this moves the ball forward the great car behind me is about to blow a red light the blue car can't see it because of that truck but because these guys are in communication the gray car told the blue car's driver something's wrong he was able to hit the brakes nobody got into a collision here's another sphincter-tightening scenario we all know this car has stopped the car two vehicles behind it can't tell because of traffic in the middle but thanks to vehicle to vehicle communication the driver in the back gets a warning to break even though he couldn't have seen it humanely also current in vehicle sensors wouldn't have been able to help here either only vehicle to vehicle can see through other cars now here's where the rubber or the RF as it were hits the road the shark fin antenna you've seen before is doing a lot more now there's a flat antenna right here facing the sky picking up GPS satellite coordinates there's a vertical antenna here in the sail that is broadcasting information out to other cars within about a thousand foot radius it broadcast an update of this cars speed in position every 10 seconds the speed data comes from the cars own internal computers and data bus that's been in vehicles for decades now a key part of v2v that car makers don't entirely control is setting up the standard language and protocols that all vehicles of all brands will use to talk to each other that needs to be done in concert with regulators and so far do tea and Nitza are kind of late they'd promised some early guidelines by late 2013 as of right now early 2014 we still haven't seen them which brings us to v2i vehicle to infrastructure that's the ultimate layer where cars roads traffic signals and network centers all talk to each other to really take self driving to a rich level now this stuff's pretty green but it rolls up the concept of the car getting signals not just from other cars but also from let's say the metro traffic control center or sensors in and around roads it can manifest itself several ways traffic signal sequencing can be sent live to a car so it knows the next signal and the ones after that and what they'll be showing and when this helps traffic move more quickly and use less fuel due to less stop-and-go congestion management this is the vision where a central Road Authority can direct cars connected nav systems during a you to spread out from the main route and use alternate paths to alleviate congestion and yet get everyone there in less time intersection management like we saw in the foreign cars a moment ago that can be accomplished via smart intersections that tell cars who it sees approaching as well as v2b as we saw sort of a digital return to the old days of traffic cops sitting in the middle of an intersection with white gloves on okay some reality checks vehicle to environment that's already happening today we test lots of cars that see net where you see things like adaptive cruise control or active lane departure correction that is basically v2e and it's in an active form then you get to V to V that's a little different thing vehicle to vehicle is not really on the market yet Ford says that technology we showed you earlier can be retrofitted to cars in the near future if it's passive if it's supposed to take over brakes and acceleration and steering that requires factory integration that's a little tougher finally there's vehicle to infrastructure this is the big dig if you will we have millions and millions of relatively dumb cars and dumb roads out there right now that are gonna have to be refreshed and that means the current stock of both has to age out and be replaced you