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Self-Driving Cars Are Safer When They Talk To Each Other (engadget.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the car-to-car-communications dept.

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: A University of Michigan public-private partnership called Mcity is testing V2V, or vehicle to vehicle communication, and has found that it makes their autonomous prototypes even safer. V2V works by wirelessly sharing data such as location, speed and direction. Using DSRC, or Dedicated Short Range Communication, V2V can send up to 10 messages per second. This communication allows cars to see beyond what is immediately in front of them -- sensing a red light around a blind curve, or automatically braking for a car that runs a stop sign... The catch of V2V? It has to be installed in the majority of cars and infrastructure (such as traffic lights) to function adequately.

9 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Right up to the point... by SwashbucklingCowboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some bad guy programs his car to give out false information causing lots of accidents. Would be a great way for a bank robber or other bad guy to slow pursuing authorities.

    1. Re:Right up to the point... by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ah, just slap in some security later.

      I mean, you don't need to design for that, right? Just lob everything in, make it do cool stuff, wait for everyone to attack it, THEN think about how it could be misused. Then hang onto that for a few years until someone dies or people start to complain a lot, and try to retro-bolt-on some rubbish security theatre to devices already out in daily use that never talk home.

      And then realise that if you have millions of cars talking together reliably, over some public frequency, it fucks up everything in a large radius, especially around things like traffic jams, and so never works as intended anyway.

      Or we could just... turn the roads into private railways. Which is basically what the whole self-driving thing is aiming towards anyway.

    2. Re:Right up to the point... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Safety critical systems are designed with "defense in depth". So incoming information would be correlated with information from other sources. SDCs have a database with locations of intersections, signs, traffic lights, etc. If a traffic light is around a blind corner, V2V comm could give a "heads up" that the light was red, so the SDC could pre-emptively brake. But if the other car lied, and said the light was green when it was really red, the following SDC would still see the green light with its own cameras as soon as it turned the corner, and still brake faster than a human in the same situation.

      Also, bank robbery is one of the dumbest crimes. Any criminal smart enough to reprogram a V2V system would be smart enough to embezzle from a bank rather than rob one.

  2. Re:Stop getting in the way of natural selection by nnet · · Score: 2

    you mean phones, CBs, coffee cups, drink bottles, kids, passengers....and well, people, you know, absolutely anything that can distract...because technology is the problem, right, not people?

  3. It would be cool by krray · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I drive a car with level 1 automation [speed control only].

    Two weeks after I bought the car it paid for itself IMHO -- driving at dusk on two lane 50mph packed road; we were all doing 50mph (rare). I saw and was ready to take any action to a car (maybe two) pulling out making a right in front of me. I never saw the Jeep making a left into traffic behind the guy making a right. And then just didn't GO.
    The car slammed on the brakes for me before I even saw the new car. I was more reacting to my car and what the hell is it doing ... "OH, now I see the Jeep". If I was driving I would have plowed into his ass end.

    Two months later I was rear ended. Not bad; I do love that HEMI. :) The car's adaptive cruise control started the hard brake and the emergency braking system finished it off. The car won't stop itself 100%, but it will take you from 100mph to 10mph in short time / distance. Traffic hard stopped from 70mph in the left lane on a highway. I could see traffic stopping; let the car do it's thing better than I could. Otherwise I'd be further back giving myself for distance / time. The computer doesn't need it.

    The guy behind me was way too far back and waiting far too long to HARD brake (more than I did IMHO). Unfortunately the car behind him wasn't ready and pushed his ass right into mine. My car stopped just short enough that after being pushed forward I was still 1' away from the car in front of me ... who at that moment pulled away as traffic was moving forward again. 1 second is all I needed.

    Anyway -- wouldn't it be cool if my car could've communicated to the car that caused the accident (two back) and have its system start a nice slow brake to the stopping / stopped traffic. Re-adjust speed from 70mph to 35mph and maintain would've done it for the next group of cars...

    1. Re:It would be cool by dwillden · · Score: 2

      Car gets a flat? It recognizes the tire deflating long before a human driver would and starts breaking, and reports the problem to the other cars which also start slowing and maneuvering to let it over to the shoulder safely.
      Object in road, assuming the object just barely appeared (out of the back of a pickup). The car hits the object it didn't have time to avoid, but immediately reports the object and the imminent impact. The other cars begin slowing and transitioning to other lanes. If the car has a little more time, it's sensors detect the previously unreported object, determines what needs to be done to avoid it and does so, while reporting the object to the rest of the nearby traffic so those vehicles and following vehicles can also safely avoid the obstacle
      Pedestrian. Again the Car either detects them in time to avoid the impact and reports the moving location of the ped in real time so following cars can also try to avoid it. If not it reports the impact, as it is still stopping trying to avoid it. The other cars adjust their speed down, and maneuver both to avoid the Pedestrian/body and the car that hit it, which has stopped in place to preserve the accident scene.
      Wildlife ditto human.
      -Countless others ditto.

      A video from Google I saw a few months ago had a prime example of how well this could work with cars that are talking. The Google-car (G-Car) detected a bicyclist coming from the left while it was stopped at an intersection. The light changed and the bike should have stopped but it did not and rolled through the intersection as the G-car and other traffic started to move. The human driver of the G-car could not see the bike due to a larger car in the left lane, whose driver should have been able to clearly see the approaching bike.

      What happened? The Gcar had seen the bike, identified it as a potential risk before the bike even reached the intersection and then flagged it as a definite risk when it failed to stop and thus the G-Car did not start moving. The car to the left started rolling and then suddenly stopped as it's driver slammed on the brakes and the bike swerved and managed to miss it. The G-Car hadn't moved and there was no risk of impact. Now if those cars were talking, none of the traffic would have started rolling at all when the bike was identified as not stopping even though it no longer had right of way due to the light change. And had it been hit, the following cars would have been notified of the crash and resulting lane closures. (The Bike was flying, had it hit the non-google car the rider would likely have landed in the road in front of the G-Car.)

      Individual sensors and computers are great, but inter-vehicle communications will actually make it even easier to deal with the situations you proposed as each car isn't having to react anew to the threat, but the incident is reported back up the road allowing for all traffic to adjust, to clear lanes well in advance allowing for smoother flow of traffic around the incident.

      --
      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
  4. Re:Stop getting in the way of natural selection by JustNiz · · Score: 2

    Thanks for agreeing with me.

  5. Adequately for what purpose? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The catch of V2V? It has to be installed in the majority of cars and infrastructure (such as traffic lights) to function adequately.

    What? No it doesn't, that's a blatant lie. No vehicle can trust what another vehicle tells it, that information can only be used for advisory purposes. Therefore, it only has to be installed in enough vehicles for a sprinkling of them to be following one another around in order to provide substantial benefits. And those vehicles are going to report on the state of traffic lights that they can see, so even some traffic light date will be in the system without any of them actually being explicitly connected to it.

    In order to achieve the maximum benefits, yes, it has to be ubiquitous. And I expect that eventually, there will be laws requiring it — and by that, I mean before the human driver is outlawed on the public road.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. Red lights? by nospam007 · · Score: 2

    Self-driving cars who talk to each other don't need red lights for a safe crossing, that's one of the points.