Forget Level 5 Autonomy – The new Nissan system can actually solve traffic

The long -term goal of most car manufacturers is currently to come to come what is called “level 5” autonomy. That is not that Tesla’s incorrectly labeled “full self -driving”, who clearly and strongly warns drivers that they must maintain attention on the road. Ahem. It is also not GM’s Supercruise or Ford’s BlueCruise. Level 5 -autonomy would enable the car to drive itself, without any interference from the owner of the car. Waymo is already doing this in different cities. But the idea that all private cars reach this stage is a dream, precisely because it might have so many benefits:

• Older people who can no longer drive comfortably, safe or easy

• Duis would theoretically disappear because you would not be tempted to drink and drive

• Driving distracted would also not be a danger; You can just stop driving and sit in the back and text or work

• Potential municipalities would open membership of the ride distribution for the cost pool of “collectives” of private cars to considerably reduce transport costs.

You will notice that none of these traffic. That is because unless or until every car has level 5 technology on American roads, all cars talk to each other (V2V) and talk to Infrastructure (V2X), a mixed fleet of autonomous and non-autonomous cars does not dissolve traffic snarls. Even 10,000 Waymo cars that are active in LA or DC will not undo the stop-and-go-snarls in both city.

But what if there was a technology that you could add retroactively to your own car that could do something like that? That is the theory behind an experiment that Nissan has just tried in San Francisco, and this is how it went.

The experiment

Nissan

The Nissan system is called Cooperative Conestion Management (CCM). The Nissan’s own Propilot Assist technology used to network different cars together. Propilot Assist already works, such as Ford’s Blue Cruise and GM’s Supercruise, which causes hands-off, to ride in the eyes. In some language is considered advanced level 2 driving or level 2+. Whatever you call it, it does not heal the traffic completely.

But with the help of CCM network, Nissan network with different cars with Propilot assistant to “talk” with each other. They created modeling and software that one of the leaders of the project, explained, ZVI Guter, was designed to study live traffic based on what the assistants of the cars felt. They also collected live data from the highway system.

But Nissan also not only wanted to tackle the optimal speed, but what speed might be best for a column with cars that are tied to each other to travel to actually proactive Congestion ease.

The most important part – we drive badly

Nissan

People, Guter explained, tend to follow too closely in traffic and then brakes too hard in response to a delay. This leads to a harmonic – a pulsating wave. We accelerate, slow down, accelerate and then delay. This is an inefficient form of transit. It is both slower than a consistent speed, and more dangerous, because if you brake harder than the driver behind you, you will become one after the other.

Guter said that the technological solution of CCM is the opposite of this harmonic, broadcasting the ideal constant speed to all cars on the train:

If you could brake harder and smear harder gear, you could in theory also disrupt the wave of traffic en route. In essence, such as dropping a stone in a pond, you create a different wrinkle effect than the prevailing wave.

How it worked

Nissan

Although computer simulations demonstrated that CCM could shorten travel times by 18 percent and drivers could save up to 42 percent on gas – which is huge – Nissan took the laboratory experiment to the field and tested CCM on a busy, busy section of Interstate 680 in the Bay Area Sessies and in total Mij. Bay Area.

With the help of the Propilot Assist cars that are electronically bound, Guter said that the cars received information from the cloud, but also from a lead “probe” vehicle that went out and fished in the larger pond, about 30 seconds for the peloton. That car shines data back to the next group of coupled cars, so that they can carefully adjust their speed, instead of creating their own stop-and-go harmoniously.

Nissan

The in -depth Zinger is that Nissan discovered that the cars in the peloton spent 70 percent less time in traffic. A further advantage is that, because they delayed much more gradually, that 85 meant fewer crafts incidents, and in turn, slower braking is less likely to activate the next car that CCM does not use to brake hard, leading to changing the overall rhythm of traffic on a certain stretch of road.

The difficult part – the technical rollout

Apple

Nissan scientists have not been -committal about the simple unleashed of technology in the wild, but in theory, Guter said, the car manufacturer could licensed the technology to work with every mobile phone from the driver and to broadcast the ideal speed for every driver on the road, or to subscribers to an system such as and subscribers. He said that this kind of technology would not be that difficult to roll out, because most drivers already have mobile phones. Guter thinks it would be better to bind it in the cruise control of a car, but the other option is to make a system such as Waze an “ideal speed” with the app, to advise the driver of that speed and perhaps to encourage that behavior.

Speed ​​monitors around school zones also do something similar, so smart signage can also work to alleviate congestion.

Some play in the system

Wireless CarPlay and Andrioid Auto

When asked whether the system could still work via mobile phone or to be blasted at an app in CarPlay, for example, with a set speed displayed on your phone or an app, and what happens when that speed changes, Guter has made something clear: it will not change that often or jump around. This means that if you think the set speed can be one second 45 mph, and next time to 60 mph disaster, that’s not accurate. The reality is that the load capacity has already been modeled and confiscated, so he said that every few minutes could look more like a change of 1 MPH, and the wave of cars should simply be consistent.

How we ruin it for everyone

The most interesting part of this study was that Nissan demonstrated that only a few cars in a train can change the pattern of drivers around them. If they all move steadily, every car behind it can also move steadily, and in turn all those cars will come faster and stop less stopping and go. Everyone saves gas; Everyone comes to their destination faster. It does not require autonomy. It does not even require that all cars have a mobile phone or app solution, such as CCM.

But like anyone who can be driven with adaptive cruise control, these systems can work with a minimal safe stop distance. So if you follow safely, there is probably at least one car room with room between your front bumper and the rear bumper of the next car. And Guter made the point that drivers who want to change lane, succeed, aggressively merge, etc., could re-introduce the harmonic stop-and-go-harmonious.

But he believes that if CCM were implemented, the benefits would be obvious: “You were too late to work yesterday, and today you are not.”

Not just highways

Mike Petrucci via Unsplash

Although Guter warned that Nissan did not study this application, he noted that secondary roadside interview could also benefit from this type of cloud -based traffic analysis and traffic flow control. Many roads in the US still have “stupid” traffic lights that only work on timing, and that is partly due to the costs of traffic analysis. But cars that shine data about the traffic flow to the cloud and back to traffic lights would mean that traffic lights can be “live”, so that they respond to traffic in real time.

A better version of this would also be “live” speed limit signs, because, just like with the use of an app or Propilot -based CCM, you would be told the ideal speed to touch all the green lights, traffic again.

Take top speeds

A clear advantage of CCM would be that it would not be vehicle dependent. We have already seen brands such as Volvo and Mercedes-Benz about auto-to-car traffic and accident information, but unless you are a driver in Sweden or Germany, with a very deep brand penetration, that data does not do you much good. Nissan’s solution could work theoretically, regardless of which car you drive, and even work with an older car that does not have a version on the screen of Apple CarPlay Or Android Auto, but you still have access to the data bumped to your mobile phone, ideally mounted dashboard, so that you would see it in an app like Waze.

LO-Fi solutions will be crucial to cure traffic, because the average American car is almost ten years old. That will not change with rising car prices. So Nissan’s technology may just be the solution that we can all use.