Smart vehicle refers to the collection, processing and sharing of a large amount of information through cars. Car and road, car and car, car and city network can interconnect with each other, so as to achieve smarter and safer driving. It is the result of the in-depth development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology in the industry, focusing on reducing traffic accidents, reducing traffic jams, and ensuring smooth traffic lifeblood. The essay will provide a comprehensive understanding of what the IoT vehicle is!
1. What is Meant by Smart Vehicles?
Smart vehicle is an emerging technology that could dramatically improve the safety and efficiency of future transportation systems and connect vehicles to computer networks, it’s able to establish wireless communication between moving vehicles, as well as between passing vehicles and roadside base stations. By using multi-hop forwarding, vehicular networks allow two vehicles outside the signal range to establish communication connections, which makes it become an important part of intelligent transportation systems in the future.
Current intelligent transportation systems rely heavily on pre-deployed infrastructure. For Example, electromagnetic sensors embedded in road surfaces, traffic cameras deployed at major road intersections, Radio frequency tags (RFID) readers installed at highway toll gates. Usually, a typical process of collecting and publishing traffic information is as follows: First, the speed and density of traffic flow are detected by road sensors, and then uploaded to the urban traffic center. After the data is processed, the traffic report can be delivered to the user’s phone over the cellular network. This is an expensive and inefficient way to disseminate location-related information since the source and the consumer of the information are literally only a few hundred meters apart under normal circumstances.
The short-distance communication capability of vehicular networks will change the communication mode of this traditional intelligent transportation system, and help the generation, dissemination and consumption of information in a more direct way.
IoT vehicle is essentially a giant wireless sensor network. Each car can be deemed as a super sensor node. Typically, a car is equipped with internal and external thermometers, brightness sensors, one or more cameras, microphones, ultrasonic radars, and much other equipment. In addition, future cars will be equipped with an onboard computer, GPS locator and wireless transceiver, which allows wireless communication between cars, as well as between cars and roadside base stations. This unprecedented wireless sensor network expands the ability of computer systems to sense and control the entire world, and allows information to be generated and shared locally without the need for massive infrastructure.
2. What Technologies are Used in Smart Vehicles
1. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
RFID is a technology to achieve object identification through radio frequency signals, with non-contact, two-way communication, automatic identification and other characteristics, having a better effect to both the human body and objects. RFID can not only sense the location of the object, but also sense the object’s movement status and track. RFID positioning method has been widely used in the field of intelligent transportation, especially that smart vehicle has a strong reliance on RFID technology, which has become the basic technology of the IOV system. RFID technology is generally used in combination with servers, databases, cloud computing, near wireless communication and other technologies, forming a huge object recognition system by a large number of RFID through the IoT.
2. Sensor Network Technology
Vehicle services require a large amount of data, the original source of which is exactly collected by various sensors. Different sensors or massive sensors form a huge data acquisition system through acquisition system to dynamically collect all the original data required by IOV services, such as vehicle location, state parameters, traffic information, etc. At present, sensors have evolved from a single sensor or a few sensors to a sensor network composed of a large number of sensors and can be customized according to different services. Sensor network technology can provide data sources for the servers, and then provide high-quality services for the vehicles as the business data after analysis and processing.
3. Satellite Positioning Technology
With the development of global positioning technology, the development of IOV has ushered in new historical opportunities. The traditional GPS system has become an important technical basis of IOV, providing high-precision and reliable location services for vehicle positioning and navigation, and has become one of the core businesses of IOV. With the increasing perfection and application of the Beidou navigation system in our country, the IoT vehicles have developed a new direction, and gradually realized the transition to the period of localization and independent intellectual property rights. Beidou navigation system will become one of the core technologies of the IOV and an important beginning of independent research and development of core technologies.
4. Wireless Communication Technology
The small amount of data collected by the sensing network needs to be transmitted by the communication system to get timely processing and analysis, and the analyzed data also needs to be transmitted by the communication network to reach the vehicle terminal equipment. Considering the mobile characteristics of the vehicle, the IOV can only use wireless communication technology for data transmission, so wireless communication technology is one of the core components of IOV technology. With the support of various wireless transmission technologies, data can be exchanged under the control of the server to achieve real-time transmission of business data and real-time monitoring and control of vehicles in the network through the transmission of commands.
5. Big Data Analysis Technology
Big Data refers to the collection of data or information that captures a large number and complex structure with the help of computer technology and the internet. Driven by the development of computer technology and network technology, a variety of big data processing methods have begun to be widely used. Common big data technologies include information management systems, distributed databases, data mining, cluster analysis, etc., which become a powerful driving force to continuously promote the application of big data in smart vehicles.
6. Artificial Intelligence Technology
Artificial Intelligence can analyze big data, then conduct research, simulation and analogy, analyze, dealing with possible situations in the process of vehicle driving and achieve intelligent IOV through human-computer interaction and other ways.
7. Standards and Safety System
As a huge IoT application system, the IOV contains a large amount of data, processing processes and transmission nodes. Its efficient operation must be standardized by a unified standard system, so as to ensure the authenticity and integrity of data and complete the application of various businesses. Standardization has become an urgent requirement for the development of IOV technology, and it is also a complex management technology. In addition, the networking of vehicles and access to services are also designed to better guarantee the safety of vehicles, so the establishment of a safety system is also very important. Whether a set of efficient standards and safety systems can be established according to the current development of IOV has become a key factor to determine the future development of IOV technology.
3. Application of IoT in the Smart Automotive Field
IoT vehicle is an important part of realizing autonomous driving and even driverless driving, and is also a core component of future intelligent transportation systems, which will play an increasingly important role in the following areas.
1. Vehicle Safety
Smart vehicles can remind drivers by advance warning, speeding warning, reverse warning, red light warning, pedestrian warning and other relevant means, and can also effectively reduce the incidence of traffic accidents and ensure the safety of personnel and vehicles through measures such as emergency braking and fatigue driving prohibition.
2. Traffic Control
The terminal and traffic information will be timely sent to the cloud for intelligent traffic management, so as to report traffic and accidents in real time, to alleviate traffic jams and improve road utilization.
3. Information Services
Smart vehicle provides enterprises and individuals with convenient and fast information services, such as providing high-precision electronic maps and accurate road navigation. Car companies can also collect and analyze vehicle driving information to understand the use of vehicles and problems, to ensure users’ driving safety. Other enterprises can also learn about users’ needs and interests through relevant specific information services and tap into profit points.
4. Smart City and Intelligent Transportation
Using smart vehicles as communication management platforms can realize intelligent transportation. For example, intelligent control of traffic lights, intelligent parking, intelligent parking lot management, traffic accident handling, intelligent bus scheduling and other aspects can be realized through the IOV. With the informationization and intelligentialization of transportation, it is bound to contribute to the construction of smart cities.
4. Benefits and Advantages of IOV
IoT vehicle not only changes the operation way of cars to a large extent, but also provides a series of online services to improve the service level of drivers. Here are five specific aspects to introduce the practical changes brought by the Smart vehicle to our lives.
1. Life Becomes Smarter
For example, the vehicle equipped with an entertainment information display screen can realize the interaction between the drivers and the cars, the screen can display GPS navigation route, video and audio playback, display vehicle safety monitoring data and so on. Mobile phones can even be connected to the vehicle, and the car lock can be controlled remotely and the air conditioning can be adjusted through the APP.
2. Safer Driving
We know that an important application of IOV is collision avoidance, and the prevention technology can broadly serve collision warning and driving rescue. Take the familiar intelligent safety driving service system IDAS as an example, after installation, you can enjoy real-time hardware alerts and remote regular data services, etc., to provide the best safety guarantee for your driving.
3. Prevent Traffic Jams
We know that vehicles have a low traffic rate at intersections, and the IOV technology can alleviate this situation by intelligently adjusting traffic lights to make the intersections as smooth as possible for drivers. In addition, many navigation software will also recommend routes to avoid congestion, to avoid all the vehicles gathered in one place to cause congestion, making travel more efficient.
4. Energy Saving and Emission Reduction
Through Telematics, information collected between vehicles and roadside infrastructure is used to advise vehicle owners to respond in a timely manner, while a series of driving behavior interventions are made to drivers, thus reducing unnecessary or irregular operations, which can lower fuel consumption and reduce exhaust emissions.
5. Auxiliary Traffic Management
Auxiliary traffic management is mainly to serve the intelligent management of the traffic department, to realize the real-time tracking of escaped vehicles, speeding driving, drunk driving vehicles, and it can remotely command and dispatch vehicles.
5. Challenges for IOV
The Platform Cannot Support High Concurrent Access
The IOV platform involves the concurrent access of massive data, including vehicle status, GPS location, surrounding environment perception, traffic information perception, vehicle-vehicle perception, human-vehicle behavior data, etc. A load of IOV platform gradually increases with the development of business, and it is difficult to withstand high concurrent impact.
Difficult to Exploit the Value of Massive Data
Data is a valuable asset for enterprises, and how to use data more effectively is a big problem being faced by enterprises. Smart vehicle brings together vast amounts of data, but currently, enterprises lack effective means to use big data technology to dig the value of information, to make the data provide source power with the enterprises’ business innovation and operational efficiency.
Lack of Enabling Platforms for Application Development
Application is the key driving force to promote the vigorous development and growth of smart vehicles. Rich IOV applications provide intelligent convenience for enterprise management, and are also an important starting point to cultivate the stickiness of IOV users. IOV application development lacks and urgently needs a complete set of application development platforms to reduce the development cost and shorten the online time, so that the application can be rapidly developed, easily deployed, and easily managed without considering the infrastructure, data management, communication protocol, etc.
The Security of IOV is Difficult to Guarantee
Security has been a major challenge for the IoT. In the field of IOV, it involves the differentiated data collection environment of various vehicles as a unit of individual, complex network transmission environment, involving enterprise data, vehicle data, user data and other core data assets, especially scenarios such as vehicle control and assistance driving, hacker attacks will directly threaten personal safety.
Ericsson put forward the concept of forecasting service quality, which is more or less systematized by 5GAA. Multiple organizations are working on standards and requirements. The aim is to “make 5G forward-looking and predictive for the automotive industry”.
5GAA identifies nine factors that involve anticipating the quality of service for a particular vehicle traveling on a particular route at a particular time.
The advent of C-V2X cellular connectivity and automotive 5G will open up the prospect of a variety of synchronous vehicular connectivity, which in turn will filter the requirements for vehicular data exchange according to the nature and urgency of the different applications.
6. Smart Vehicle Market
A U.S. research firm called Lux Research has released a report showing that the concept of IOV was once limited to maps and music, and is opening up a new era as technology continues to advance: from 2020 to 2030, the total market for hardware and software systems for IOV is expected to reach $12.7 billion.
The commercialization of IOV technology has begun well in advance of market share growth, and Lux Research’s technology statistics show that innovation in the IOV field is being developed at more than twice the average of 2,500 other industry-developed technologies, centered around 5G commercialization and its applications, vehicle-to-external information exchange, and driverless technologies.
Josh Cohen, the lead author of the report and analyst of Lux Research, said, “The IOV market and its expansion opportunities have changed dramatically since the advent of a predominantly consumer entertainment and leisure culture, with cellular links, cloud management, data access and data analytics forming the key pillars of the next phase of industry development. Just as smartphone app developers have learned to use derivatives such as advertising to subsidize program development, IOV service providers are actively looking for other sources of revenue besides drivers.”
7. The Development History, Current Situation and Future of IOV
The future trend of IOV technology with new power may be manifested in the following aspects.
1. The current situation of oil and energy shortage and the continuous increase of vehicle exhaust emissions will make people’s living environment tend to be bad. The application of IOV in future vehicle driving will be able to take ecology as the center and realize ecological travel.
2. It can be applied to safe driving, cooperative driving and automobile activity safety and other fields.
3. Intelligent transportation is involved.
The specific performance is as follows: tracking the location information of the goods that have been accurately located, and providing services for the goods in the supply chain and logistics chain; At the same time, it can realize real-time transmission of vehicle information, collect information through vehicle sensors, and implement computing and classification processing in the cloud center. Different types of data are classified and distributed, so that different departments can master the information data, and implement intelligent traffic scheduling through the feedback data.
4. Accurate Navigation
Under the operation of the sensitive navigation system, the vehicle will be able to obtain the system instructions immediately, and will carry out accurate calculations of the navigation path according to the driver’s previous experience, so as to provide accurate navigation guidance for the driver.
5. Networking of the Hardware of the Whole Car
Automotive electrical and electronic systems are gradually developing into centralized architecture systems. In the future, every car will be like a smartphone, corresponding to application software, operating system, chip layer and hardware layer. Application software can be developed based on a unique operating system and computing chip to control multiple hardware through a unified centralized ECU. Automotive software controls will be more efficient and will be able to be OTA upgraded like mobile phones, enabling continuous optimization of control software and continuous improvement of the hardware performance experience. Through this centralized electrical architecture, the operation of the vehicle hardware can be remotely adjusted and modified by software.
6. Online Vehicle Service
The IOV in the era of vehicle digitalization will greatly improve the quality of vehicle service. Offline payment car scene will realize online, the real-time condition of the car can be transferred to the service provider through the clouds, the transparency of car conditions will help service providers to provide users with a series of active services, such as driving, parking lots, gas stations, illegal inquiry, charging pile charges, on-site maintenance, on-site car washing, UBI insurance and so on. At this time, the car becomes the traffic outlet, and the service provider has the motivation to promote the service. The efficient and fast online service experience will also attract users, thus greatly promoting the efficiency of the car service.
7. Diversified Service Modes of IOV
In the era of vehicle digitalization, all the condition information of each vehicle can correspond to an ID in the cloud. Through the unified management and adaptation development of the ID, car networking function will not be limited to the interactive channel, and it can be extended to mobile phone APP, WeChat applet, intelligent equipment, intelligent household equipment, and other interactive equipment, which will greatly facilitate the user’s experience, extend car interaction of frequency and time, improve the interaction experience, improve transport experience. In addition, some functions with high requirements for Internet speed or computing ability are separated to the outside of the car, such as mobile phone APP and smart wearable devices (but the functions on the car, such as navigation, must be retained). In this way, the requirements on the hardware of IOV are reduced, so as to cover more low-end models. Through the accumulation of big data self-learning, thousands of interactive services will be achieved.
8. Boost the Development of Driverless Technology
With the enhancement of the whole vehicle networking capability and the further development of smart city infrastructure, the self-driving perception and decision-making functions will be transferred from the vehicle to the road infrastructure, which will help the cost of a single vehicle to drop and enable the self-driving of all vehicles through centralized control in the region to improve traffic efficiency and safety. The business model of self-driving function will also have great innovative applications because the functions of the whole car hardware can be turned on and off through the cloud, and the same car model can have the same hardware, but different configurations can be distinguished through software restrictions, allowing users to turn on the hardware functions on the car by paying after purchasing the car, making the “free trial” model possible. This can not only achieve marketing to consumers, but also promote the car companies to provide enough to attract users of the self-driving software experience.
