Someday soon, your car will talk to other cars on the road, telling them where it is and what it is doing. The Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium (VIIC) is a group of eight automakers developing, with the support of the Department of Transportation (DOT), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. While V2V and V2I may sound like another Orwellian invasion of privacy, it offers a lot of benefits, such as the near elimination of multicar accidents, better road clearing for emergency vehicles, and even up-to-date navigation points-of-interest databases.
Is Vehicle Infrastructure Integration a boon for safety or too much a threat to privacy?
The DOT has been working in conjunction with the VIIC and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to develop V2V and V2I. The basic idea is that all cars would contain a GPS chip, sensors, and a transceiver to broadcast the car's coordinates and telemetry information. The car would at the same time be receiving this information from other cars in its proximity. The data would also be picked up by roadside receivers that route the information to a central server at a local traffic authority or other body.
The tech
The government has reserved the 5.9GHz spectrum for transportation use, and the IEEE is developing a standard, called Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC), so that cars from all automakers can talk to each other. DSRC development is currently focused on wireless protocol 802.11p, a derivative of 802.11a.
The technical hurdles are complex, as every car would need a unique identifier, similar to a computer's IP address, and would act as a router for other car information. The IEEE has also outlined some tough requirements. The wireless protocol would need to prioritize some data in its 27mbps of bandwidth, transceivers will need a range of 1,000 meters, and the individual components have to perform data transfer and processing in 50 to 100 milliseconds. The devices that perform these small miracles need to be cheap enough that they won't unreasonably jack up the price of the cars to which they are fitted.
According to David Henry, senior manager at DaimlerChrysler and president of the VIIC, "We foresee a rollout of V2I systems and applications first, throughout the whole vehicle fleet, before V2V applications are implemented." Just like a file-sharing or social network, the system gets more valuable the more people--or cars, in this case--are using it. Because all cars can't be outfitted with V2V overnight, V2I will offer immediate benefits for the cars that get it, and can be easily upgraded to support V2V when it comes around.
Safety first
There is a surprising amount of research and development going on with the VIIC, although it doesn't often surface to the general public. The DOT is pushing the technology because of the quantum leap it would represent in automotive safety. With V2V and V2I systems installed in vehicles, your car would know when the one ahead of you is braking, and how fast it is stopping. With this information, your car could give you a warning to avoid hitting the car in front, or it could hit the brakes for you. Another frequently used example of this system's functionality is that, if your car were stalled on the road, it would broadcast this information so other cars would have ample warning to move around you. Ambulances and fire trucks would have special identifiers, and your car could alert you when an emergency vehicle is approaching and from what direction.
People don't necessarily like letting their cars think for them, but this type of technical assistance can make up for our inherently human lapses. Humans get fatigued and can't sustain constant, open-eyed concentration on the road. And although we have more than 180 degrees radius of peripheral visual perception, we can't process multiple points of information from that radius. For example, if there are moving objects to either side of your peripheral vision, you can only mentally process information about one of them at a time. What researchers call the useful field of vision is much narrower, with some studies putting it at around 35 degrees. A car can be fitted with multiple sensors giving 360-degree perception. And these sensors never blink or need to look at instrument gauges.
Traffic reporting benefits immensely from this giant, mobile wireless network. As V2I systems are rolled out in new cars and the roadside infrastructure is set up, each car will serve as a traffic probe, giving an indication of how fast traffic is moving. The more cars and infrastructure that are in the network, the better that reporting becomes. Today we have automated traffic reporting on major roadways in some metropolitan areas, but a full-blown V2V and V2I network could give you more comprehensive traffic information, letting navigation systems find different routes around traffic jams. Beyond saving you some time, this tech has environmental and economic benefits as cars won't sit idling in traffic, and cargo transport won't come to a halt on the roads.
Google is also taking a strong interest in this technology. Why would an Internet search company be interested in car technology? Because it wants to extend its reach into your car. And where Google goes, Yahoo and Microsoft are likely to follow. Right now, navigation systems have static databases of restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses. A vehicle communication infrastructure could make that dynamic by sending requests for local restaurants, for example, over the network, with results coming back from Google, Yahoo, or any other online database.
You probably wouldn't get a choice as to where your local search request went, as Internet search companies will probably partner with automakers or OEM navigation suppliers. Google certainly has a lot of weight to throw around, as well as serious incentive to get this technology up and running. Microsoft is already building systems for cars and could easily set up the technology to taps its own local search databases.
Dash Navigation is already working on an Internet-connected navigation device that exhibits the same convenience features listed above. However, the company has to rely on Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular connections for its network. The work of the VIIC would provide more reliable communications.
What about privacy?
If your car is reporting its position, there's a strong likelihood that will coincide with your position. This vehicle infrastructure could be seen as a de facto tracking system for people. And there is every reason to believe that law enforcement will have access to the data that's collected from our cars. CNET security columnist Robert Vamosi recently pointed out how your car already collects data about your driving. A vehicle communication infrastructure would take this to new heights, working as a real-time tracker for your car.
If your car gets stolen, you would probably be very happy that the police could find it right away. But we also have a strong sense of our right to privacy in this country, so car tracking won't sit well with most people. There is also the question of hackers listening in on this abundance of wireless communication. A private security firm could be hired to spy on you and attempt to tap into the wireless data stream to find out where your car is and when it is moving.
DaimlerChrysler's David Henry tells us "the VII (Vehicle Infrastructure Integration) system and security architecture is being designed to minimize on-vehicle data storage and automate purge protocols. In addition, the VIIC is addressing data-access issues through legal rules, in order to prevent the possibility of data misuse." Development is still in its early stages, but the VIIC is considering security and privacy needs. But even if tracking data isn't stored perpetually in your car, there's still the question of the central server. Will laws be written to purge individual data from those servers, or will the police mine the data every three months and send out speeding tickets to everyone that the records show has breached a speed limit?
Timeline
Getting automakers to work together--as well as a new roadside infrastructure set up--would seem like an impossible task. But VII is moving along fairly rapidly. All the technology to set up VII exists, but standards still have to be finalized. The VIIC was founded in only 2004, yet Michigan already has a test bed for the system. From 2006 to 2008, automakers and the DOT are testing their proof-of-concept. The Consortium has designated December 2008 as a deadline to decide if the network is feasible. After that, full-scale implementation should begin.
Get the most HD with Comcast
Post your comment here
