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US To Drive 3,000 Wi-Fi Linked Vehicles In Massive Crash Avoidance Trial
coondoggie writes "The U.S. Department of Transportation said it will run a massive road test of cars, trucks and buses linked together via WiFi equipment in what the agency says will be the largest test of automated crash avoidance technology to date. The test will be conducted by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), and feature mostly volunteer participants whose vehicles have been outfitted with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication devices."
Ann Arbor is a good place to start, its drivers are too preoccupied with their dissertations to watch the road...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
3000 WiFi radios emiting together on how many channels and using what bandwidth ? Even if they drop to 1Mbps and use all 11 US 802.11 2.4Ghz channels, the collisions caused by ~270 devices on the same channell will make that network unuseable.
What about the trolls with a WiFi jammer (like a microwave over with a screwdriver jammed in the door safety switch) ? Turn-it on and watch the pile-ups.
Or will they use all channels in the 802.11n 5Ghz spectrum ?
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It can't be difficult to build a powerful Wi-Fi jammer. Like almost anything wireless, this sounds like a dangerous thing to develop reliance on.
1. 3000 wifi radios all broadcasting together on only 13 channels? My wifi at home can hardly handle the 2 other people in the street and my phone's bluetooth being on at the same time.
2. wouldnt ever street these cars are to drive need wifi? unless the plan is to connect to the infrastructure network via 3G, which dies the second a single spec of rain is in the air.
3. there is a reason a plane has a pilot, people wont fly if the plane is flown by computer (which actually does most of the work now anyway), people also wont allow a computer to drive their car for them without someone being sat at the wheel to take control "just incase".
portfolio
"...caused a 3000 car pile-up today, the largest in US history..."
I'm sure there would be privacy concerns (maybe not, given that it's volunteer), but I would love to see som graphical animations of how these Wi-Fi-equipped cars interact with each other around a town. It would be interesting to see a heat map of overlap with regard to things like rush hour, sporting events, etc.
I have to assume they'll have Wi-Fi stations set up in various spots to monitor traffic. Could replace the old pressure tubes for estimating throughput.
Will they at least tell the non-volunteers that their vehicle has been modified? I hope medical scientists don't pick up this new way of increasing the size of your test group.
WiFi? What madness. When I run my 2.4 GHz microwave oven, WiFi virtually dies in my apartment. A leaky microwave oven next to a freeway could lead to a chain of crashes in cars whose owners have grown to trust too much this crash-avoidance technology.
Something this critical, shouldn't be in the crowded 2.4 GHz band.
...for the video of the resulting Blues Brothers style pile-up.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I sure hope the post the results on YouTube.
And this is how it begins. First the computers keep you from crashing your car. Then they are injected into every car.
Then they eliminate us all.
Government devices reporting back what we are doing where we are going how fast we are going.. BIG BROTHER!!!!
Where do the spectators sit?
Here is the DOT project page on the experiment, which includes a nice FAQ, and a description of the purpose.
This particular 3,000-vehicle experiment, fwiw, is not intended to test the crash-avoidance technology in a live trial, but rather to collect a data set. The indicators aren't going to be displayed to the drivers on a HUD or anything, but just recorded for analysis, along with vehicle position/telemetry.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...they are using the wrong networking topology? Token ring is the way to go if you don't want collisions .
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
They programmed all the cars to avoid hitting each other, but forgot to tell the cars to also avoid hitting everything else.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Time to find a truck stop to hide at!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
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My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Well, truckers, you're about to become obsolete. Great job creation, right?
What ever happened to the software that was used in the desert and urban challenges? Are the academic institutions involved actually producing something useful now or is their stuff still relegated to the 'lab' (either due to lack of generality or because things are broken)? Anyone know?
"Powered by Windows 8"
Then we have nothing to fear, Hackers will still be in control of everything.
Put our safety in the hands of equipment operating in unlicensed spectrum that can be interfered with by every microwave, cordless phone, and cell phone hotspot within 200 yards.
Some of the radios used will feature an enhanced 802.11 processing that allows a improved performance in urban clutter situations over conventional chipsets. See one of the providers of radios for this trial. :
http://www.cohdawireless.com/technology/solution.html
Slashdot is crazy relevant the last few days. Not for any of you necessarily but for me because I've been reading a collection of short stories called Nightmare Age edited by Frederik Pohl on the topic of how the earth will be ruined in various ways by humans. So first it's the Matt Ridley essay (the anthology starts with an over the top 1977 scenario by Paul Ehrlich). Now this which fits with the radio control technology from the Kenneth Bulmer story Station HR972.
Although 2.4ghz has more range than 5ghz, it has only 3 non overlapping channels with approximately 60mhz total bandwidth available to the North American public.
5ghz has 21 non overlapping channels.
Think of non-overlapping as saying non-interfering channels. Also most legacy and current devices use 2.4ghz. There is great probability that a 2.4ghz wifi device will have to compete with other nearby wifi networks, water, metal, microwaves, 40mhz 2.4ghz 300mbs n+ routers.
With factors like this plus different transmit powers on the devices 2.4ghz would only be feasible in urban areas. The way to go would be 5ghz with high transmit power and omnidirectional antennas on the vehicles roofs. That alone only covers the issue of interference. you have to deal with network technology and topology next.
and by hackers you mean 'teenagers on 4chan'
In the minus column of autonomous vehicles and car trains is this: the death of the freedom of travel (sans real-time monitoring). This will rapidly become mandatory, even for current cars via a module plugged into the OBD2 port. The insurance companies want it to more efficiently deny claims (and raise rates in real time) and John Law wants it as he despises privacy above all else.
Just like a free lunch, there ain't no such thing as a care-free autonomous car.
...it will be a crash production test. Bad ideas just never seem to die.
E Proelio Veritas.