We are still a bit far from what I am writing today is a reality. But it is also closer. I don’t think there are many people who know what the Internet of Things or IoT is, less than what artificial intelligence (AI) is capable of, as much as we have written about it in this Blog, and even less what is the 5G or fifth generation of mobile telephony. But if we also combine all these technologies to seek some benefits, such as improving road safety for cyclists who suffer too many times the bad arts of drivers of cars, vans or trucks, to name a few, welcome that technological confluence. Everything is to bring down to zero that fateful figure of 36 cyclists who died in 2018 on our roads.
In order to see it, we went to Becerril de la Sierra, at the end of the 18th stage of the Cycling Tour of Spain in that town, where Telefónica, Seat and the DGT, with the collaboration of Ficosa and Aerum, taught live in a pilot test or concept how drones equipped with cameras were able to send information from the road and their vehicles to an IoT platform of the DGT through the 4G network -when it exists it will be done from a 5G network- so that with AI The data obtained will be analyzed in real time and identified, for example, cyclists on the road. And it is that information, analyzed and deciphered by artificial intelligence, which is returned in the form of an alert to the car – in this case specially prepared and connected from Seat – so that the driver circulates more carefully.
The objective of the project, according to the protagonists, is “to show the operation of an internet of things solution for early detection and warning of risk to drivers who travel on a road in specific cases that frequently cause situations of great danger, such as the presence of a cyclist rolling on the same road, or the existence of a car stopped on the road due to a breakdown or other type of incident ”.
Technically, the vehicle is connected to the network thanks to a telematics unit, Telematic Control Unit (TCU), using C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle to Everything) technology and thanks to software that enables communication between the internal network of the vehicle and the environment of this, such as the DGT3.0 platform of the General Directorate of Traffic, the signaling systems and infrastructure, and other vehicles.
5G enters the scene
Telefónica has endowed the project with end-to-end connectivity and has opened its network so that third parties can deploy applications at the edge of the network, enabling critical communications with immediate response or low latency -40 milliseconds with the 4G network, which will be 5 milliseconds when there is 5G- for traffic management. To establish communications with connected cars, latencies must be minimal, and therefore it is necessary to deploy 5G capabilities in the current network, specifically what is called Edge Computing , a large distributor brain that houses content and applications very close to where they are consumed by the user.
Already at this year’s Mobile World Congress, Telefónica and SEAT presented several cases of connected car use and assisted driving via 5G in a real environment for the first time in Spain, and in which sensors installed in the different infrastructures of the city warned connected cars from the presence of pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles stopped on the roadways.
The DGT3.0 platform is in charge of keeping road users connected by informing them of the traffic status in real time, detours, reversible lanes, application of measures in pollution protocols, traffic restrictions, works in progress and any type of incident that may affect circulation. Likewise, it will be able to send them alerts of the proximity of cyclists, the forecast of cuts or congestion and the risk of fog. All this information is of vital importance when it comes to improving road safety, especially on secondary roads.
All this data will be exchanged anonymously between the drivers and the intelligent platform of the DGT with all the guarantees to maintain the digital security and privacy of the users.
