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500 || AWSAR Awarded Popular Science Stories - 2019
world. This is the problem I was mentioning. If we can warn the driver half a second before an accident, we can save many lives.
My journey as a researcher started on that day. About 60% of road accidents are happening due to the negligence of the driver. If we try to warn them on time, we can reduce the risk of road accidents. Imagine a future where a driver can be warned about a potential crash. I started referring to many white papers, journals, research articles, videos and technical magazines. On further discussion with my guide, I zeroed into the concept of “Communicating Vehicles” or rather ‘Car-to- Car Communication’. The network formed with these connected vehicles is called vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET). I did an extensive survey on all the aspects of vehicle-to-vehicle communication, which I had published in a journal. After the extensive survey, I could find that there was a lot of research going on in this area, but the security aspects
of communicating vehicles
were not dealt with in detail.
As intelligence is
everywhere, we can provide
intelligence to the vehicles
also. Imagine you are driving
on a highway, and when you
are changing the lane, that
information is transmitted to
other vehicles near you. Isn’t
it smart? VANET is currently
in active development by General Motors, which demonstrated the system in 2006. Other automakers working on vehicle-to- vehicle communication include BMW, Honda, Audi, Volvo and Car-to-Car Communication Consortium. Some of the high-end cars are now having lane change warning assistance but cannot broadcast this information to others. Our cars are on a rapid evolutionary path that allows:
• • •
Fewer accidents: make safer roads Less congestion: ease faster travel Reduced emission: makes clearer air for everyone
In realizing these, a new technology involving 2V (vehicle to vehicle), V2I (vehicle to infrastructure) has to be evolved. VANET networks can be formed on demand, and the information can be relayed among the cars and between a car and a roadside infrastructure unit (RSU) in wireless mode. RSU is like a base station. It is a brilliant idea to make two such networks co-exist to provide road safety. VANET not only provides road safety but also improves drivers’ comfort.
Using V2V communication, the connected cars can have an awareness of 3600 within the range of 300 m. The warning messages a car is transmitting can be heard by neighbours so that the driver can be aware of the surroundings. When an accident is detected, the vehicle can
continuously broadcast this information to the approaching neighbour vehicles. When a vehicle breaks at a certain lane, it broadcasts information to neighbours to quickly detect the sudden breaking. VANETs have emerged recently as one of the most attractive topics for researchers and automotive industries due to their tremendous potential
to improve traffic safety, efficiency and other added services. VANETs are one of the influencing areas for the improvement of an intelligent transportation system to provide safety and comfort to the road users. Considering the tremendous benefit expected from vehicular communications and the huge number of vehicles, it is clear that VANETs are likely to become the most relevant realization of mobile ad-hoc networks. Currently several efficient routing protocols have been
As we continued our journey, my elder son asked a question. “Amma, is there any way to avoid such accidents on the road?”