Shaping the Future of Car Technology
University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute is piloting a study to study the future of car technology. This effort will test a Wi-Fi-like technology that allows vehicles and highway infrastructure to communicate with each other and could help reduce crashes and improve traffic congestion.
Transcript
00:00:05 James Sayer: Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot Model Deployment; it's about vehicles communicating with one another wirelessly. The idea being that if you know where other vehicles are located around you and you know where you are, essentially drivers could be warned about potential crashes. Peter Sweatman: Safety Pilot Model Deployment is probably the most exciting project we’ve ever done here at UMTRI, and we are doing it right here in Ann Arbor deploying nearly 3000 vehicles who talk to each other. And in doing so we are creating a million connections, almost a million connections between those vehicles. This is a real glimpse of the future.
00:00:43 That’s why everyone is so excited about it. James Sayer: So the technology is a lot like Wi-Fi, and that the vehicles transmit a signal and other vehicles are listening for those signals. They are wireless, they happen faster than most Wi-Fi, but you need that really high speed so that there aren’t delays; crashes happen transpire really quickly. There is lot of other potential benefits about this wireless communication. You can also communicate with the infrastructure, the environment, traffic signals, things of that nature, and you can get warnings about traffic congestion, you could get advice about alternative routes where you will consume less fuel. But right now we are really emphasizing is the safety features, crash warnings, two drivers
00:01:30 and in order to help address roughly 34,000 people who die in America each year as a result of motor vehicle crashes. James Sayer:I don’t know that I’ve seen a lot of Camry's in here. Male Speaker: This one is brand-new. It’s just got 900 miles on it. James Sayer: 900 miles on it, okay, good deal! So the vehicles that are in the study are actually people’s personal vehicles. They are bringing their vehicles in, we’re instrumenting them with this wireless device that will allow it to transmit basic information about latitude, longitude or the position of the vehicle, how fast it’s going and what direction it’s heading.
00:02:01 So this is an example of one of the devices we are installing in people’s personal vehicles. It is a dedicated short range communication device works at 5.9 gigahertz. It also takes information from a GPS antenna that’s mounted in the vehicle. Peter Sweatman: Moving into a system that’s designed to avoid a lot of the problems that we’ve had in the past, and this is going to be much, much more effective. Our objective here is to reduce fatalities and injuries in motor vehicles by an order of magnitude and to make sure that we are seeing entrepreneurship in Michigan, and so that we are expanding the base, the automotive base in this state with these intelligent transportation systems. So UMTRI, this Safety Pilot Model Deployment is absolutely in a sweet spot as far as UMTRI’s
00:02:50 future is concerned.