The Future of Connected and Autonomous Cars

Connected and autonomous cars are one of the new technologies that will remove the risks of human error. Vehicles with some level of autonomy, as cars equipped that assist the driver, are already on the market.

Is Home Wi-Fi Technology Ready for IoT? Learn more about how Wi-Fi technology is transforming homes into “connected homes.” 

Autonomous Cars

The National Highway Safety Traffic Administration has defined fully autonomous vehicles as “those in which operation of the vehicle occurs without direct driver input to control the steering, acceleration, and braking and are designed so that the driver is not expected to monitor the roadway while operating in self-driving mode constantly.” So, there are levels of automation. Level 1, involves an advanced driver assistance system that helps the driver with either steering or braking and accelerating. The next levels offer more and more driver assistance features. Level 5 is the final, in which humans are merely passengers who do not need ever to get involved in the driving.

Connected Cars

CAAT describes connected vehicles as those that use technology to enable the driver to connect with the car, with other cars on the road or even with pedestrians, with roadside infrastructure, and with the cloud.

The Benefits

One of the main benefits of connected and autonomous cars is the ability to monitor the environment around continually and to compensate for lapses in driver attention. Some other benefits that CAAT sees for the further development of these technologies include:

• Reducing the need for new infrastructure: due to the ability of self-driving vehicles to provide a more managed traffic flow.
• The ability to use predictive assessments to better predict travel time via connectivity to the cloud, infrastructure, and other vehicles.
• The ability of drivers to be more productive during their travel times by eliminating some of the tasks currently required of drivers.
• Improvements to energy efficiency through the use of more efficient driving, lighter-weight vehicles that consume less fuel, and more efficient infrastructure.
• Changes in vehicle ownership that lead to more vehicle sharing. New collaborations between businesses who specialize in autonomous and connected vehicle technologies.

The Research

According to an article from Phys.org, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are deploying advanced modeling and simulation tools. The project is a collaborative effort with many universities, cities, and planning agencies to predict the impacts of connected and autonomous vehicles on energy and travel in metropolitan areas. The project began two years ago and is expected to last another year. The simulations require the use of specific metrics, including changes in vehicle miles traveled, the value of travel time, the amount of energy consumption, and congestion. The research is operating on the assumption that people will spend more time on the road if they can make more productive use of that time. The models revealed that fuel consumption and miles traveled go up when drivers can do other tasks instead of focusing on driving.

Is Home Wi-Fi Technology Ready for IoT? Learn more about how Wi-Fi technology is transforming homes into “connected homes.”