Subaru Shows Off New Road Tech For Autonomous Cars

Whether they’re from Silicon Valley or the Motor City, companies around the world are trying to make truly autonomous cars a reality. Most of those companies are attempting this from the car side of things. The car handles everything: it has sensors to read the road, and on-board computers to process what’s happening and to control the vehicle as needed. The advantage of this technique is that the cars can, hypothetically, operate on any road, and no special infrastructure is necessary. The downside is that these cars rely solely on what they can see and sense, and that can be limited. The cars might not even register that information correctly, such as with bad roads, bad weather, and more real-world conditions. To alleviate some of those problems, Subaru is working on another idea that involves roads that can talk with the cars.

How The Technology Works

Since last fall, Subaru has been working on autonomous vehicle systems that coordinate with other infrastructure. It set up a test loop in Hokkaido, the large, northern island in Japan, to test these systems. In addition to a vehicle that can operate autonomously, and with remote input, the system uses 5G communication systems and roadways with fiber-optic sensors.

The road sensors have been developed by Kajima Corporation, a Japanese company that works on various civil engineering technologies including roads, tunnels, and more. The road sensors are able to detect the presence of cars, including the numbers of them and their position on the road. This information can then be sent over the communication system to the car’s computers, and probably also to off-board computers, all to help the autonomous car know what’s happening around it and where it is. In addition to Subaru’s test course in Hokkaido, the company and Kajima have installed sensors along a tunnel access road in Osaka for testing and demonstrating during the Japan International Exposition this year.

The Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Technology

One of the main advantages of this technology is the ability to provide information in difficult conditions. Part of why Subaru installed a system at its Hokkaido testing grounds is because of the heavy snow in Hokkaido. This allows Subaru and Kajima to ensure the systems still work when the roads are completely covered. If the sensors are still able to detect cars even buried under snow, that can provide invaluable information to autonomous cars about their position on the road, since cameras and other sensors on-board may not be able to see road markings and other indicators that are critical for positioning. In other low-visibility situations, such as heavy rain and fog, these road sensors could also come in handy, even without a covering of snow. Basically, including infrastructure into the autonomous driving system can offer lots of additional, useful information for making these cars better and safer.

Related

Future Autonomous Driving Tech Will Decide When It’s Safe For You To Engage

A new innovation intends to give manufacturers control over when customers can drive with less focus.

The downsides come from the additional costs and complexity. Installing sensors in roads will never be cheap or easy. Then, those sensors have to be maintained, which adds costs over time. The same goes for all the communications technology used to connect cars and roads. These systems will also need to be standardized so that all autonomous vehicles from all automakers can use them. Considering how long it took for automakers to settle on plug designs for car charging, we don’t have the highest confidence in them coming together to standardize infrastructure standards for autonomous cars. Backwards compatibility could be an issue long-term, too. So, the technology could do a lot to improve autonomous driving, but the costs and hurdles to implementing it are substantial.