 |
| Build Your own Dream (BYD) in China launched its remote-drive car, the Su Ru |
YOUR children will be reading the news while they drive to work and
then, still captivated by what I hope will be this blog, park the car by remote control in a tight space, if the latest developments in cars bear
fruit in the next few years.
BYD says remotely controlling the car is perfect for squeezing into
parking spaces that are too tight to allow the doors to open once parked, or for
bringing the car closer in windy or rainy weather. Although the shelter you’re
huddling in will need to be within 10 metres of the car due to the range of the
remote control.
In the United States, the Department of Transport at the same time
started a year-long vehicle field test of a vehicle swarming in the Ann Arbor
region of Michigan.
Officially known as the Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot Model
Deployment Programme, the swarm will wirelessly connect some 3 000 vehicles in
the world’s biggest real-world test of connected-vehicle communication
technology, deployed by the University of Michigan Transportation Research
Institute (UMTRI) as part of a U.S.$22 million partnership with the department.
The field test is designed to determine how well vehicle wireless
communication technology works in real-world conditions, and the effectiveness
of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) systems in
improving road safety.
Daimler is conducting a similar field-test of its car-to-X vehicle
communications system in Germany, involving 120 network-linked vehicles.
The 3 000 vehicles taking part in the U.S. include cars, commercial
trucks and transit vehicles, with embedded devices in 64, aftermarket safety
devices in around 300, and the remainder will have simple transmission-only
vehicle-awareness devices.
Most vehicles in the test fleet have been supplied by volunteer
participants from the Vehicle Safety Communications 3 Consortium, such as GM,
which is providing eight V2V-equipped Buick and Cadillac cars.
To test the effectiveness of V2V and V2I systems, the model
deployment vehicles will wirelessly send and receive electronic data from each
other and infrastructure.
In the event of a crash, vehicles driving in a blind spot, or a
potential rear-end collision with a stopped vehicle, the data will be translated
into a warning for the driver of the relevant vehicle or vehicles.
“Vehicle-to-vehicle communication has the potential to be the
ultimate game-changer in roadway safety — but we need to understand how to apply
the technology in an effective way in the real world,” said NHTSA administrator
David Strickland. “NHTSA will use the data from the model deployment as it
decides if and when these connected vehicle safety technologies should be
incorporated into the fleet.”
GM, which is also working on a system that uses WiFi direct
technology to add pedestrians and cyclists to the connected mix, says analysis
of the data collected could see V2V technology deployed on a wide scale before
the end of the decade.
