An Orlando-based company believes everyday traffic infrastructure can be tweaked to accommodate self-driving vehicles — and it just won government funds to prove it.
Connected Wise LLC is part of a team that won $3.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to create a communications system between traffic infrastructure and self-driving vehicles. The DoE on July 28 awarded $60 million to dozens of projects aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions in cars and trucks.
The grant will accelerate the work Connected Wise already was doing to implement smart traffic infrastructure that allows for the use of autonomous vehicles, especially in rural areas, CEO Enes Karaaslan told Orlando Inno. “This will open new doors for autonomous vehicle deployment.”
The project will address excessive energy use by autonomous and connected vehicles, which often rely on high-resolution cameras, lasers, sensors and more to perceive objects around them. These vehicles make excessive computations in order to process the data they collect.
However, the proposed communication system Connected Wise will help develop, called Vector, will outfit existing traffic infrastructure and vehicle parts with the ability to share this data. That means cameras on traffic signals would collect data and share it with approaching cars, giving the vehicles crucial data and cutting down on the computations and energy usage of the vehicles. The project’s goal is to cut the cost of computing in these vehicles by 60% and slash energy consumption by 40%.
Plus, it tackles an issue among existing connected vehicle systems that use wireless technology. Access to high-speed wireless is limited in rural parts of the country, hindering autonomous vehicle deployment, Karaaslan said. Vector removes the need for better wireless infrastructure by using the existing technology installed on the roads or in vehicles.
The use of established infrastructure to collect or share vehicle data is increasing in popularity, said Claudia Paskauskas, CEO of Orlando-based tech transportation consulting firm InNovo Partners LLC. InNovo Partners is not involved with the Vector project. Still, the firm typically uses existing traffic infrastructure to collect the data it analyzes for transportation agencies. It’s not only easier, but more cost efficient because additional cameras don’t need to be purchased, Paskauskas told Orlando Inno. “That’s a much better return of your investment.”
Connected Wise will not act alone on the project, which is expected to last three years. The company, based at the University of Central Florida Research Park Incubator, will collaborate on it with more than a dozen groups, including the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida, MetroPlan Orlando and researchers from the University of Utah.
Scoring this grant from the federal government with a research team primarily based in Florida illustrates the strength of the Sunshine State as a testing ground for autonomous and connected vehicles, Karaaslan said. Academic, government and industry groups in the field work well together and test beds are widely available, he added.
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