As a result of massive overcomplication by most players in the space, V2X is really currently limited to little more than fancy alerting. Emergency vehicle alerts, road condition alerts, etc. This can be seen in efforts by companies like IIT Hyderabad. Frankly, this isn’t close to enough.
A vehicle needs to be able to communicate:
- It’s precise location (including lane designation)
- Speed of travel
- Direction of travel
- What it intends to do soon (e.g. lane change to the left turn lane in 500 feet, slow to 15mph over 50 feet, left turn in 550 feet … with those numbers updating as the vehicle approaches lane change)
In other words, and in simple to express terms, a vehicle must say, “Here’s where I am and here’s where I’m going.”
Now understand things like drive policy and cooperation with other vehicles means that there needs to be communication. What I have above is a simplistic example that assumes rules and other cars would not need to alter their own behavior in response.
In fact, when it comes to the V2X space, it is this issue of “permission” that in many ways is a central and defining issue. We at Spider V2X have the communication pretty much nailed in a way that we do not see any other player in the space (because they’re overcomplicating what is really a simple issue).
Just because one car wants to make a lane change doesn’t mean that it can. Imagine a scenario of a car in the second lane of a freeway in heavy traffic. It needs to move to the right lane in preparation of taking an exit.
Today, with human drivers, often there’s enough space somewhere to “fit in” with more than enough distance to take the exit. In a world of autonomous vehicles follow distances are likely to dramatically shrink. This means that when one vehicle in heavy traffic needs to make a lane change other vehicles will have to “grant permission” by slowing to give enough space for that vehicle to fit. This will require a “request/response” protocol and drive policy/rules that are not created by a vehicle manufacturer (which could then easily be more permissive to other vehicles from the same manufacturer and less so to vehicles from other manufacturers).
Request/response must be based on a “vehicle manufacturer blind” approach geared to being cooperative to any car on the road.
Drive policy and the request/response protocol must be designed to be inherently cooperative first. The rule of thumb here should be to grant permission to another vehicle unless there is some reason involving safety why not. When one car “wants” to make a lane change, and broadcasts that want, the other cars that will be in that location should act in a cooperative manner by responding with their intent to slow/create space, and grant that permission by default. This needs to be done without driver intervention, or driver permission either.
While other players in this space are dramatically overcomplicating the mesh network, we have two major areas of concern about the companies that are involved:
- Current efforts are being done backed by specific manufacturers and each manufacturer is coming up with their own solutions and driver policies. This is all but 100% certain to result in competing and non-compatible protocols and drive policies between manufacturers.
- Little thought being given to preventing the various AI systems from communicating more information than is needed.
Any V2X system must be completely and entirely automobile manufacturer agnostic. This includes the drive policy that governs the how/when/why of granting permission to other vehicles (through both communication of granting that permission and through altering drive behavior to grant space).
Again, with all current efforts being guided by the various manufacturers, this is unlikely to be the case unless legislative bodies start indicating that there must be a more cooperative atmosphere and industry groups start working together across manufacturers to help ensure that this become the case (really ahead of various legislatures requiring it).
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