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72 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Connected and Autonomous Vehicles 73

Figure 4.13 Vehicle-to-vehicle communications between connected vehicles.

Figure 4.14 The autonomous car.

4.8 Connected and Autonomous Vehicles within a Smart City

The smart city will provide a wider technology context within which connected
and autonomous vehicles will operate. One aspect of the smart city will be the
use of the internet of things (IoT). As connected and the autonomous vehicles
have emerged, interest has grown substantially in the IoT. It is viewed as the
next generation of the Internet, and it is predicted that it will go beyond con-
necting computers and smart phones to connecting a multitude of different
devices including refrigerators, air conditioning systems, homes, offices, retail
systems, and financial systems.
The notion is that the connected vehicle will reach beyond the vehicle,
connecting to the back office, and will ultimately support connections between
the vehicle and many other things. Google’s recent acquisition of Nest and
Apple’s announcement of an entry into home automation support the trend
toward the IoT. It also seems that the IoT is being used as a marketing tool to
explain to drivers the values and benefits of the connected vehicle. An impor-
tant message of the IoT, at least from a transportation perspective, is that the
vehicle is not the center of the universe, but part of a larger network of things
that are connected and services that can be provided to people. Dan Teeter, the
director of vehicle connected services for Nissan, summed this up with the fol-
lowing description of a typical day in the life of an IoT citizen [8]:

A driver named Pat drives to work in his autonomous car. His smart
watch and seat belt sensor detect that his blood pressure and heart rate are
elevated, so the car switches to soothing music and a back rub. Arriving at
work, the car drops Pat off and proceeds on its own to a prepaid parking