Ann Arbor, Michigan — Honda has been busy developing a system to prevent road collisions since 2017 and is finally ready to start testing on the road, with the help of Verizon and Michigan’s MCity autonomous and connected vehicle facility.
The vehicle to everything (V2X) system called Safe Swarm is related to the Internet of Things (IoT) a program that allows devices to communicate with each other without human input. The system uses a variety of sensors to track data in areas such as vehicle position, speed and direction. It then takes that data and combines it with other sources like smart cameras, safety alerts and data from other drivers on the road.
Initially, the main issue with this new development was how to allow a vehicle to constantly compute data without draining the battery. Honda has turned to 5G, which means all of the data crunching will be done via the cloud. There won’t be any need to install a computer into vehicles, instead, all the car sensors and warnings systems will be linked to a 5G connection and rely on cloud supercomputing to make the split-second decisions, said Honda.
In a recently released video, Honda highlighted some of the capabilities this system will allegedly tout once finalized.
This system could alert a driver if a pedestrian began crossing the street by quickly gathering data from a camera at an intersection, and sending a warning message to the driver. In a case where a driver may not be able to hear or see an emergency vehicle approaching, a warning can be issued which will alert drivers of the location and route of emergency vehicles. This technology could also alert drivers if another car is likely to speed through a red light.
“When you consider that roughly 42,000 people were killed in [U.S.] car accidents last year and 94 percent of accidents are caused by human error, our new technologies including 5G and MEC can help drivers ‘see’ things before the human eye can register and react helping to prevent collisions and save lives,” said Sanyogita Shamsunder, VP of technology development and 5G Labs at Verizon.
There is no release date for this technology yet, but when it is released Honda believes it will drastically decrease the chances of unexpected accidents.
