Imagine a future where your car can instantly analyze road conditions, predict potential hazards, and communicate with other vehicles: and do it all without having to rely on connection to some distant cloud servers. Edge computing can make this a reality by processing data locally within the vehicle, and it’s revolutionizing vehicle safety systems and automotive manufacturing.
Revolutionizing Safety Systems with Edge Computing in Automotive Manufacturing
Vehicle safety has always been an important issue for the automotive industry, and, over the years, advancements like anti-lock braking systems, airbags, and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) have all done their part (and been revolutionary in their own rights) in stopping accidents and saving lives. All these systems rely on sensors and electronic control units, however, and as vehicles become more connected and autonomous, the amount of data generated by all these sensors has grown exponentially.
Processing it using traditional methods leads to three big issues: the need to be constantly connected (which isn’t always a given), the problem of latency, and issues with privacy and cybersecurity.
What It’s All About
Edge computing is simply the practice of processing data near its point of origin rather than in a centralized data-processing warehouse. For a vehicle, it means you’ll need to embed powerful processors and intelligent software directly into the car’s systems. With this innovation, however, latency becomes virtually zero, and that makes all the difference in safety systems where mere milliseconds can be the difference between a tragic accident and a story to tell everyone later. Localized data processing also goes a long way towards ensuring better privacy and security, simply because lots of sensitive information doesn’t need to leave the vehicle at all.
Better Decision-Making
Modern vehicles have to be able to both collect and then analyze huge amounts of data, and the problem has always been that this needs to be done virtually instantly to allow protective safety systems to work as they should. When all this data can be processed instantaneously, right there on the spot, the vehicle’s systems can make much better and faster decisions in the face of changing conditions.
Reducing Dependency on Connectivity
While connectivity is important to modern vehicles, having to be dependent upon cloud-based systems poses some risks. Chief among them is the simple network interruption or delay. In a worst-case scenario, this could stop safety features from taking the immediate action they need to, but edge computing minimizes this dependency by keeping the critical safety functions independent from external networks.
Improving Data Privacy and Security
Edge computing enhances data privacy by offering a way to keep sensitive information within the vehicle. Personal data, such as biometric identifiers, driving habits, and location history, can be processed locally, so there’s a smaller risk of any unauthorized access to the data.
With the public’s growing concerns over data privacy and increasingly stringent data protection regulations being passed by governments around the world, it’s likely that manufacturers who want their vehicles to remain popular will need to get on board with not transmitting everyone’s sensitive info in vulnerable ways. Vehicles that process info locally can also be equipped with advanced security protocols to protect against hacking and unauthorized intrusions. By isolating critical systems from external networks, you minimize the potential attack surface area dramatically.
Enabling Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems
Advanced driver-assistance systems need real-time data processing to perform functions like adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance, blind-spot warning, emergency braking, and collision avoidance. Edge computing offers the computational power that’s needed both to analyze all those many sensor inputs and to execute the resulting appropriate functions quickly and accurately.
And while this is important for normal vehicles, it’s even more so for autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars have to process even more data so they can make their way through complex environments safely. By handling this processing on board, these self-driving vehicles will be able to make those instantaneous decisions without delays and with a smaller margin of error.
Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Communication
Vehicle-to-everything communication, which includes interactions with other vehicles (V2V), with infrastructure (V2I), and even with pedestrians (V2P), is something every manufacturer is thinking about these days. Doing it well is key, and by processing and responding to this information locally, a vehicle can coordinate actions in a way that enhances safety and traffic flow.
For instance, if a car detects an icy patch on the road, it could potentially instantly share this information with nearby vehicles and traffic management systems to prevent accidents and improve road safety. It can only do this, however, if it has the computing power and resources to manage all that data.
Overcoming Challenges in Implementation
While it’s obvious there are important benefits to this new technology, there are, of course, also challenges. The biggest at the moment is the need for hardware that’s actually capable of handling these intensive computational tasks while operating under the sorts of difficult conditions found in your average car or truck. Processors need to be developed that are both powerful enough to do the work but also energy-efficient enough and durable enough to last for the long haul.
Software development also needs to advance. Algorithms will have to be optimized for real-time processing and designed to work reliably in all scenarios. Finally, all this has to be done while ensuring compatibility with existing vehicle systems and being as flexible as possible to accommodate future technologies.
If you’re ready to be part of the revolution, contact us now at SAAB RDS, your technology enabler, and let’s work together on cutting-edge solutions that will boost your productivity and get you ready for the future.