Detailed maps and road infrastructure are pointed out to be essential requirements for upper level autonomous vehicles

As the pace of autonomous vehicle development accelerates both at home and abroad, interest in vehicle-to-X (V2X), a wireless communications linking vehicles to roads, and relevant detailed maps is increasing.

“IEEE projected that autonomous vehicles will account for 75% of all vehicles in the world by 2040. However, autonomous vehicle requires not just cars but also road infrastructure. Complete version of it will be achievable only after then,” pointed out Hyung-Joo Choi, manager of Korea Automotive Technology Institute.

Full-scale autonomous vehicle needs to be at least level 2 (awareness by driver and control by vehicle) or higher. But car connoisseurs emphasize that not just vehicle itself but role of intelligent road is essential for the autonomous vehicles to advance from level 2 to level 3 (both awareness and control by car). The latest case supporting the suggestion would be last year’s minor collision between Google’s autonomous car and a bus following just behind it while the autonomous car was test driving in Mountain View, California. If a V2X communication system was installed at the crossroad to allow the car and bus to exchange information, the accident might not have happened at all.

 
▲NXP’s V2X RoadLINK enables drivers to ‘check’ the front side of traffic obstructions such as corners or heavy-duty trucks.(Image source: NXP’s home page)

Korean government plans to establish such communication standards as V2X, etc. by early next year through its next-generation intelligent traffic system project. Dubbed ‘Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS),’ it exchanges information about road conditions including accidents, traffic congestion, etc. with vehicles at back side and roadside base stations through terminals mounted in the cars. Using dedicated frequency bandwidth of 5.9 GHz, it is capable of information exchange even while driving at high speed.

Suggesting that “Even though autonomous vehicle is achievable with just vehicle sensors, its early implementation will be possible by fusing information from vehicle sensors with help from C-ITS,” Chang-Ki Kim, deputy director of Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport disclosed that “with the goal of achieving autonomous vehicle by 2020 in 3 stages, we plan to establish a leading project for expressway autonomous vehicles and nation-wide expressway C-ITS in stages, starting from 2017.”

Detailed maps urgently required for autonomous vehicles

To implement safe and precise autonomous driving, development of relevant detailed maps with precision of down to 0.5 m is urgently needed. Utilizing detailed map information, ADAS functionality based on the maps should be implemented and vehicle positioning performance should be improved.

 
▲HD Live map from Hereis a cloud-based real-time map technology utilizing precision GPS, 3D surface detection technology, etc.

Sang-Hak Seo, director of research of Hyundai MNSoft, evaluates that current detailed maps are expressway-oriented and only at level 3. “In the future, it is up to us to include how to construct roads in the downtown areas, how to generate and provide alley way maps and how to detect pedestrians or people on the bicycle roads,” he added.