Researchers demo tele-operated driving
If the rental car drives up to the customer’s home just minutes after he completed the reservation and there is no driver, it could be a case of autonomous driving. But even more probable is that there actually is a driver – but he sits in the car rental office and controls the vehicle remotely. While autonomous driving is still a matter of the more distant future, remotely controlled vehicles could become a standard service within five to ten years, researchers of the Munich Technical University (TUM) believe.
In the project Visio.M, scientists from the TUM’s Chair of Vehicle Technology demonstrated that tele-operated works safely in public road traffic. They equipped the Visio.M test car – a battery-electric vehicle, by the way – with six video cameras and visualized all relevant functions on a central control device. The video signals are aggregated in a car-based computer and transmitted through secure LTE connection to the operator’s working place.
Fig. 1: The driver sits in front of an array of screens and controls – much like in a vehicle simulator.
There, the driver sits in front of three large monitors and a steering wheel, a dashboard and pedals – much like in a driving simulator. The screens show the images captured of up to five forward and sideward looking cameras. An additional rear-looking camera captures what would appear in the rear view mirror. The steering wheel is equipped with a force feedback mechanism, which provides a very realistic feeling. Likewise, stepping onto the brake provides a realistic haptic effect. Besides the all-round visibility, the operator’s working place also provides the sound from the interior of the vehicle in a spatially correct reproduction, generated with a Dolby 5.1 equipment.
In many cities, the 4G mobile radio network coverage is good enough to provide the bandwidth necessary for the transmission of video images, sound and control data required to remotely control a vehicle. The available transmission capacity is growing, and the next-generation video codec H.265 will offer an even more bandwidth-efficient image data compression, reducing the amounts of data by 50%. But, as the researchers point out, a 3G network as it is available today could be used as well despite its much lower bandwidth. Even with 3G, delay times still are way below 0.5 seconds. However, in the case the available bandwidth decreases or the radio connection fails, the car will be slowed down to a full stop automatically. Despite the technical feasibility, the legal situation has to be cleared before the remote control technology could be used commercially.
Nevertheless, the researchers believe that tele-operated driving will become reality within the next five to ten years, because the costs are reasonable. Camera and remote control equipment is available at the price not exceeding the price level of many options in today’s car catalogues. Use cases are plenty – from the Car Sharing vehicle that can be delivered to the home to parking services in cities or sending electric vehicles to the next available charging station.
Participating in the Visio.M research project were carmakers BMW and Daimler, The Munich Technical University, tier one suppliers Autoliv and Continental, chipmaker Texas Instruments, technology companies Amtek Tekfor, Finepower, IAV, Intermap Technologies and Siemens as well as testing services provider TÜV Süd.
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