Smoothing Our Ride
Sensors are also making driving safer. Many of today’s cars can correct for human errors, like stopping if the driver doesn’t see an obstacle. Fully self-driving cars have the potential to improve accessibility for the elderly and the disabled, reduce traffic, be more fuel efficient and allow passengers to not focus on driving.
Connected Cars
Introduction
Technology in cars has been improving our experience for years. The introduction of GPS made it easy for anyone to navigate. Built-in smart assistants now allow us to get specific local information like traffic, dining options, events, weather and more.
Technical Experts
Raul Colcher
IEEE Life Fellow
Automotive Data Integrity
Since connected cars are still quite new, security considerations are constantly emerging. Data from sensors is potentially the most vulnerable, and the stakes are high, since the physical safety of the passengers could be at stake.
Automotive companies are investigating the use of optical fibers to avoid electromagnetic interference. Optical communication network channels can be placed near high-power electric cables and devices and provide reliable functioning without safety concerns or interference worries. Suppliers are also developing in-vehicle networks based on global automotive Ethernet standards which would carry encrypted data, rather than using proprietary and legacy networks where the data is vulnerable and un-encrypted. Adopting these standards would help prevent cars from being hacked and remotely controlled by a malicious actor.
Raul Colcher
IEEE Life Fellow, CEO of Questera Consulting (Brazil)
Member of
IEEE Computer Society
Manufacturer Updates
With a huge array of sensors and cameras, the amount of data being transmitted per second between the vehicle and the central system stands to be massive. Handling this data will be a challenge with implications for the security of the ride.
Car manufacturers will be required to continuously increase bandwidths for both point-to-point data pipes and distributed network structures to meet new data demands. Estimations are that fully-automated cars will send over 25 gigabytes of data to the cloud every hour. In this context, the support telecommunications infrastructure will need, in addition to being reliable and universally available, to present bandwidth and latency characteristics that seem to lead to a natural preference for 5G networks.
Raul Colcher
IEEE Life Fellow, CEO of Questera Consulting (Brazil)
Member of
IEEE Computer Society