V2V, V2I, technology and the possible future of road transport

“If I asked people what they want, they would ask for a faster horse.”
Henry Ford on the analysis of customer requirements

Modern car is a rather conservative thing in its basic characteristics. Despite the numerous electronic bells and whistles, it remains a means of increased danger, managed exclusively in manual mode using a strange biological processor, located between the steering wheel and the driver's seat. But times are changing, and technological advances in recent years have seriously propped up a shaky raft of common sense. So what can we expect from the industry in the next five years?

Auto transport

Here, of course, everyone knows about Google initiatives. Lupasty avtomobilchik with a camera rotating furiously on the roof quite successfully copes with the task of automatic driving on test tracks. He is not allowed to enter the city, but not because of the inefficiency of the hardware, but because of problems with laws that protect the lives and health of people. But everyone in the automotive industry is well aware that the exit of automatic transport on the road is just a matter of time. Experts call 2020 year, and on the way at this date is not technology, but only and exclusively laws. Well, quite understandable fear of scary robots-killers, controlled by sociopath hackers :)

GM experts see the following steps on the road to automatic driving, many of which have already become a reality:
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1. Informing the driver without interception
2. Takeover in case of emergency
3. Possibility of limited control transfer (automated mode)
4. The ability to fully transfer control at the initiative of the driver
5. Fully automatic car

The use of automatic transport provides many benefits: comfort, reduced congestion, safety, energy efficiency, etc. The problem is that the benefits of automatic transport for the end user are not at all obvious. And while there are many unsolved problems. How does an automatic car drive on a freeway full of “ordinary” cars? How will ordinary drivers react to auto car maneuvers? What needs to be done to make everyone feel good and safer on the road?

Technicians in one voice say so far only one thing - to begin with, it is desirable that all the cars on the roads are connected to each other by a data network.

Related cars

Modern V2V (car-to-car) communications are based on standard DSRC (Dedicated short-range communications) technology aka IEEE 802.11p, which is well-established in electronic toll collection systems. Experiments show that a car on which V2V equipment is installed with a built-in antenna can keep confident communication with other cars within a radius of 800 m. With stationary objects (V2I) - up to 1000 m.

Antennas for outdoor installation, for installation on the windshield and for concealed installation in the car

The antennas are connected to the onboard equipment, to which the sensors of the vehicle can also be connected via a standard bus (CAN, etc.)


DSRC on-board and roadside equipment

As a result, we have an unlimited number of automotive telematics data sources, which may contain a car's position based on GPS, odometer, accelerometer data, braking signs, data from other sensors, as well as data received along the chain from other cars. Immediately problems:

• Lack of standards V2V application level. In the American working group IEEE 1609 and in the European working group TC204, lower-level standards have been developed. Applied topics in the V2V area are at the design stage.
• Questions of privacy and protection of the system from deliberate manipulation (which is fraught in the conditions of intensive high-speed movement)
• With a large accumulation of connected cars, an avalanche-like increase in the amount of input data for analysis takes place, which leads to errors and brakes of onboard devices. Methods of effective data filtering without prejudice to the basic management scenarios have not been worked out.

Why DSRC?

Firstly, the technological basis is currently debugged, the OSI model is developed down to the application level. Protocols have been developed, including high-level ones. The applications currently debugged and standardized in Europe are as follows:

• Charging (ISO 14906). While the vehicle is traveling under the antenna, a secure communication channel is organized and a journey transaction is formed - a data structure sufficient for calculating the fee and debiting funds.
• Controlling the enforcement of charging rules (ISO 12813). Same as payment, only other crypto keys and other information from the onboard device. For example, license number, number of axes, information about the contract, history of changes in signal levels, communication quality log, etc. (fields can be selected)
• Positioning Assistance (ISO 13141). While traveling in the field of the DSRC antenna, the antenna identifier and additional information about its location are recorded in the onboard device. Extremely useful feature for cases where it is impossible to rely on GPS data, but it is necessary to obtain information that the car drove in a certain place - in tunnels, on mountain serpentines, on difficult junctions.

The listed applications work everywhere in Europe. Charging through DSRC works on almost all collection points with barriers (so-called electronic payment lines), as well as in free-flow mode (mainly for commercial vehicles). In the USA, DSRC frequencies were really allowed to be used only this year, so the Americans introduced similar systems mainly with RFID tags instead of DSRC, but the DSRC standardization work, however, went on as usual.

DSRC devices use a licensed frequency spectrum specifically designed for road safety needs. The protocol is designed to work at high speeds (the device quickly wakes up and establishes a connection), meets all the requirements for information security and works well in conditions of multiple signal sources, which is common in a stream of machines.


DSRC spectrum. For the needs of V2V allocated service channel 172.

Applications V2V and V2I. A bit of science fiction

Within the framework of a short note, it is difficult to sufficiently fully disclose the topic of opportunities opened up by smart cars. Now a car equipped with a radar seems to be some sort of extraterrestrial miracle, what can we say about truly connected cars. But dreaming is not harmful, and then I will list those applications and services that experts are developing now and which we will see on the roads in the next five to seven years.

Of particular importance is safety. Immediately make a reservation, the theorists do not really know exactly what to do in a situation when automated, connected and ordinary cars coexist on the road. Therefore, services suggest a significant (or overwhelming) superiority of connected cars on the road.

Security Services V2V (car - car)

• Avoid collision with the next car ahead
• Electronic brake lights. A sharply braking car signals the use of emergency braking, all of those approaching from behind turn on a signal or even intercept control of automatic equipment. Now there are similar systems using flickering "stop" and optical sensor
• Warning about the car in the blind zone. Now there are analogues on the base of the radar
• Help with changing lanes. Similar to the blind zone, but with a large number of parameters. The indicator shows that rebuilding is safe.
• Warning of the danger of overtaking (see picture below)
• Warning of possible collisions at intersections (on the stands they demonstrate the scenario of going to the main road under conditions of limited review)
• Oncoming traffic alert
• Cooperative adaptive cruise control (aka "train")

A truck warns a passenger car about to go for overtaking about the danger of such a maneuver.

A number of V2I services (car - roadside infrastructure) are also being developed in terms of traffic control, warning of meteorological conditions, road works, trains at a crossing, etc. On the commercial services V2V and V2I need to talk separately and devote to this separate note.

In an ideal world, all of the above is quite viable. But in reality, the bright picture is overshadowed by the “unpowered” cars moving along the same road, the “non-advanced” motorcyclists and the proud owners of mopeds, horse-drawn carts and bicycles. The engineering and expert community is currently accumulating an experimental base and developing complex scenarios for the introduction of V2V technologies, which would make it possible to gain at least some real benefits from a well-developed technological background. We are left with you, with bated breath, to follow the development of this direction. Maybe even participate in its development.