February 2015
8
S
afety
& S
ecurity
Application of the IoT will extend to all
aspects of the car, for example, the mechanics
of the vehicle, external infrastructure support-
ing traffic flow, and the comfort and entertain-
ment of the occupants. The connected car will
be able to benefit from intelligent transport
systems (ITS) combining inter- and intra-ve-
hicular communication, smart traffic con-
trol, electronic toll collection, vehicle control,
as well as safety and road assistance, among
many others.
Cars connected to the IoT will be able to
supply information about location, speed
and direction, allowing powerful servers to
analyze traffic flow, and predict bottlenecks
and manage congestion when jams do occur.
Inside the car, drivers will be warned about
impending problems and advised of alter-
native clear routes. Outside the vehicle, con-
gestion-easing techniques directed by these
computers will include variable speed limits,
smart traffic lights and signage, tidal road
flow, and variable toll pricing. Some of these
systems already exist by measuring traffic flow
using roadside monitoring or buried-induc-
tive loops, but information coming directly
from connected cars will offer more precise
information, in real time, across a wider catch-
ment. The system will also enable direct com-
munication with the driver, offering advice on
how to avoid the areas of congestion. And in
the future, the worst cases of congestion could
be managed by allowing remote computers to
take control of a vehicle and manage its prog-
ress through the traffic jam before handing
control back over to the driver when things
calm down.
But while solving congestion is undoubtedly
beneficial to both driver sanity and the coun-
try economy, safety remains the number one
priority for car makers and traffic authorities.
So it is not surprising that these organizations
are looking for ways to leverage the IoT to
make driving safer. Avoiding accidents in the
first place is the best way to eliminate inju-
ries and fatalities, and engineers are working
on systems that take the concept of conges-
tion avoidance a step further by lowering the
risk of collisions using real-time information
about how well others on the road are driv-
ing. Drivers could be assigned a score and the
system would then warn of poor performers
and advise - via the car satellite navigation -
revised routes to avoid them. Other IoT-en-
abled accident avoidance schemes will use
ITS to analyze the data from connected cars
to ensure that two vehicles don’t end up on the
same piece of highway at the same time. One
example of this technology comes from Ade-
laide, Australia-based Cohda Wireless. The
Cohda system uses an STMicroelectronics
GPS platform to provide data about the vehi-
cle’s progress. The GPS platform is teamed
Figure 1. Traffic congestion cost the U.S. nearly $98 billion in wasted fuel and lost work hours
during 2011. (IstockPhoto #21416015)
Figure 2. The connected car will benefit from intelligent transport systems. (source: ETSI)
Figure 3. Cohda Wireless ITS warns drivers of potential hazards that are out of sight.
(source: Cohda Wireless.)
