AS MY WIFE AND I WERE DIGGING OUT OUR CARS FOLLOWING
the latest snowstorm, my mind started to drift toward research I recently
read concerning self-driving cars.
Most of the current navigation systems for automated vehicles rely on
road markings. Visual cameras and sensors “see” the lines to make sure the
vehicles stay where they should.
That might work well for trucks and cars in California, but what happens when the lines are obscured by ice and snow? For automated vehicles to be commercially viable, they must be able to travel in all kinds of
weather—including the six inches of heavy white stuff we were shoveling
from our driveway.
Researchers in Finland understand this need and
are now testing autonomous cars designed for severe
weather conditions. Key to their research is linking
self-driving vehicles to “smart roads.” If you’re not
familiar with smart roads, they are experimental roadways or sections of existing highways where sensors are
either embedded in the pavement or arrayed alongside. The sensors pick up all sorts of information about
the condition of the road and the traffic traveling on it.
A few experimental smart roads have been built in
the United States, including a 2.2-mile test highway
in Montgomery County, Va., and a 35-mile section
of U.S. 33 in Ohio. The roads have centralized communication systems and sensors to measure moisture,
temperature, lighting, weather conditions, and traffic.
The researchers at VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland are
using the Finnish Transport Agency’s Intelligent Aurora Road, opened in
November. They have developed a robot car called Martti that is a fully
autonomous vehicle built on the chassis of a Volkswagen Touareg. Martti
is considered to be the first self-driving vehicle to challenge serious ice
and snow.
Martti is equipped with cameras, antennas, sensors, and three laser scanners to sense environmental conditions and to guide the vehicle. In initial
tests in December, Martti was able to travel 40 kilometers per hour ( 25
mph) in falling snow on a snow-covered road without lane markings.
Eventually, smart roads can be equipped with sensors in the same way
today’s highway lanes are marked with embedded reflectors. Communicating
with each car, the sensors can control navigation and traffic flow.
It will be fun to watch as this technology continues to develop. But as
advancements in self-driving trucks and cars rapidly accelerate, we need
to make sure our roads and other infrastructure are also ready to meet the
future.
bigpicture
Chief Editor
Snow-covered roads? No problem.
David Maloney
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