Honda and Verizon are teaming up to research how new connected safety technology using 5G and mobile edge computing (MEC) could ensure fast, reliable communication between road infrastructure, vehicles and pedestrians sharing the road, thus reducing collisions and saving lives.
Super-fast, reliable and low-latency data transmission at the edge of the network is essential for connected vehicle safety. Verizon's 5G and MEC platforms bring the power of the cloud closer to the vehicle, lowering latency, offering massive bandwidth, and improving communications and connectivity between drivers, other cars, traffic lights, pedestrians and emergency vehicles to improve threat detection and avoid accidents when seconds matter most.
Since 2017, Honda has been developing a technology to realize a collision-free society called SAFE SWARM. Using Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) communication, Honda SAFE SWARM enables vehicles to communicate with other road users and share key information such as location, speed, and vehicle sensor data. One limitation of this approach is the need to outfit each vehicle with onboard artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The use of 5G helps move the AI capabilities from the vehicle to the MEC, reducing the need for AI onboard each vehicle.
Each research scenario demonstrates the potential of 5G and MEC to communicate urgent safety messages between vehicles and infrastructure, reducing the need for complex computing onboard each connected vehicle. In the future, this connected vehicle technology could help ensure that autonomous vehicles will be able to communicate seamlessly.
Ehsan Moradi Pari, Ph.D, research group lead at Honda's Advanced Technology Research Division
While the research is preliminary and not intended as a product feature at this time, 5G-enabled vehicle communication and MEC have the potential to advance safety for everyone sharing the road.
Sanyogita Shamsunder, VP of Technology Development and 5G Labs at Verizon
The ability to move computing power to the edge of our 5G network is an essential building block for autonomous and connected vehicles, helping cars to communicate with each other in near real-time and with sensors and cameras installed in streets and traffic lights.
