How to leverage advanced driver assistance systems to increase traffic safety

To answer this question, the keyword is the ecosystem. Cars are not alone on the roads and streets, so they need to actively cooperate with other moving surrounding objects and static elements of traffic infrastructure. These objects can be anything you can imagine: different cars, people, bikers, logistics vehicles, public transport buses, etc. and the traffic infrastructure such as traffic lights and signs, road works, etc. Communications and cellular networks are essential. It makes sense to further develop services on top of this existing framework to coordinate and connect all of these moving objects and infrastructure.

If you add 5G to the equation, it enables a new level of performance: very low latency, high capacity, high reliability, better coverage, higher data rates, dynamic policies, edge computing, network slicing, to mention a few.

Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS)

Particularly, Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS) will benefit from a 5G enabled connected ecosystem. The driver will have better awareness and information about the surrounding environment and the data gathered by sensors embedded in the car. The driver can make better decisions affecting their safety and improve the safety of others in the ecosystem. Also, Autonomous Driving (AD) algorithms will be enhanced with this additional information. In fact, “connectivity is a sensor” is already taken into account by automakers when designing service logic for ADAS.

The amount of ADAS traffic in the cellular networks is expected to grow over time, as illustrated below. Here, the increase in traffic is partly due to additional and more advanced ADAS services such as Collaborative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS), Vulnerable road user protection, and new Human-Machine-Interfaces (HMI), where the last is denoted as C-ITS day 2+.

Ericsson has demonstrated the value of cellular connectivity to enhance ADAS by testing different ADAS use cases. Together with partners, Ericsson is developing and delivering innovative solutions.

Requirements for ADAS

To create this safer traffic coordinated ecosystem, it will require three main components:

1. The vehicles and every object participating in the ecosystem must have technical resources connected to it. These resources can vary depending on the object; for instance, vehicles will embed a SIM (in addition to all the local sensors). People and other vulnerable road users will use smartphones to be connected, and finally, infrastructures (traffic lights, signals, etc.) will be connected to the network (wired or wireless).
2. A network is required to enable communications among all participants in the system. This requires collaborative partnerships among different stakeholders, and Ericsson works to advance the partner ecosystem.
3. Finally, different service platforms are essential to provide effective, secure, trustworthy, and reliable ways to exchange information among all relevant participants in the ecosystem. This information can be based on events, relevance, real-time location, criticality, etc. Ericsson offers solutions to manage connected services with the Connected Vehicle Cloud platform.

ADAS use cases

Three examples listed below illustrate how connectivity, especially 5G, will enhance the next generation of ADAS.

Improving road safety and efficiency

A real experience on road safety and efficiency was developed in collaboration with Telstra, Lexus, and a road traffic operator in Australia. In this proof-of-concept, some use cases have been tested (namely Electronic Emergency Brake Light, Slow/stopped Vehicle Warning, In-vehicle Speed Advisory, Curve Speed Warning, Red Light Violation Warning, and Pedestrian Warning/Right Turn Assist) over a 4G public network. The network was optimized for low latency on the way towards true 5G capabilities.

Cloud solutions for the safety of road users

Three use cases were developed jointly with our partner Veoneer, centered on showing how 5G networks and Ericsson cloud solutions for Automotive (Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud suite) improve the safety of road users (drivers, bikers and pedestrian, road workers). Traffic prioritization for emergency vehicles is also showcased.

For more details, see our three videos on YouTube about bicycle notification, road worker warnings, and traffic prioritization for emergency vehicles.

Bicycle notification

Construction worker protection

Emergency vehicle notification

5G aquaplaning, emergency call and pedestrian alert

Advanced driver assistance over 5G, including sensor sharing, was demonstrated in collaboration with Audi, TIM, Pirelli, Qualcomm, Italdesign, Tobii, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. This included aqua planning, video sharing from emergence calls, and pedestrian warning systems. Here, we address one of the largest pain points with driving assistance systems to reduce the number of notifications in the vehicle by using eye-tracking.

Enabled by 5G, these real-life examples demonstrate how an ecosystem approach for driver assistance can increase traffic safety.

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Advanced Driver Assistant Systems