The industry calls it V2X communication — vehicle-to-anything. Today, there are four dots, but that number will become hundreds, thousands, and millions, as future cars roll off factory lines with V2X built right in.
After more than a decade of engineering challenges, industry infighting, and regulatory red tape, cars that talk to one another, and the world around them, are almost here. They’ll alert one another to road conditions, tell you when the traffic signal will change, and even warn you not to pull out of that blind intersection, because they can see the oncoming traffic you can’t.
Before they learn to drive themselves, cars are going to get a lot chattier.
ALL SEEING, ALL HEARING
Panasonic might be better known for plasma screens and nose-hair trimmers than smart cities, but in Japan, the company built an entire techie town atop a former factory in Fujisawa, and established itself as a leader in the industry. Now it’s carrying that expertise to Denver by spearheading a massive smart-city initiative called CityNow. While it will eventually encompass everything from a neighborhood studded with solar cells, free Wi-Fi, and pollution sensors, Panasonic is also working with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) to place Denver at the forefront of V2X tech.
Chris Armstrong, director of smart mobility for Panasonic, points to the map on the TVs behind him. “Behind each of those blue and purple dots, that’s a simple visualization of the data that we’re consuming from every single one of those vehicles,” he explains. “Ten times per second, those vehicles are generating and sharing and broadcasting data: the steering wheel angle, the accelerator status, the windshield wipers status, the airbag status, the traction-control system status.”
Receivers on light poles in the street pick up the signals and relay them back to the CDOT operations center via fiber. That’s how we’re watching them move in real time without sending any data through cell carriers like Verizon. But the cars can also talk directly to one another, like drivers flashing headlights at one another in passing.
As we watch, the unexpected happens: One of the cars loses control and skids off the road. Sort of.
The driver really just punched a button to trigger the airbag sensor and fake the crash, but the results are no less impressive: A nearby CDOT camera mounted on a light pole snaps around to refocus on the scene of the “accident” in just seconds. A screen inside the command center cuts to a live feed of the scene. Operators can dispatch emergency services to the exact location with the press of checkbox. Alerts pop up on the screens of the three other cars, warning them about the accident and rerouting them around it.