The next generation of internet technology will allow road
vehicles to communicate with each other to manage traffic flow,
according to a technology expert.
Egbert-Jan Sol, former principal system architect at Ericsson
and chief technology officer at think tank TNO Science, predicts
that the next internet revolution will see trillions of devices
communicating over the internet.
Cars in the future will be able to receive information from the
car in front on whether it is slowing down or accelerating, and be
able to adjust their speed accordingly. "If cars can adapt their
speed automatically, it will improve the flow of traffic," said
Sol.
Sol said a study for the National Road Authority in the
Netherlands using computer simulations found that if a car's speed
could be controlled automatically, the average speed of the journey
would improve. He said, "If a car travelling at 100kph can adapt
its speed, and it hits traffic, we found that the average speed
only drops by 20kph to 80kph."
Sol is involved in The
Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge, which invites participants
to develop operating system software for car control systems,
intended to demonstrate cooperative driving, state-of-the-art
technology to reduce the incidence of traffic jams, minimise CO2
emissions and prevent accidents on the road.
Sol was speaking ahead of the
Future
of Connectivity event at the Royal Society of Art.