Driverless vehicles get the green light

As the world continues to emerge from global recession, businesses are investing their cash reserves in turning an accumulated backlog of technological opportunities into products and services. As a result, the world is entering a dramatic and disruptive period of change. A combination of technological innovation, revived consumer demand and a strong push for returns on shareholder investment is driving companies and governments to build new capabilities and examine every aspect of the way that they create and deliver value.

One of the developments which will shape and disrupt the world over the coming decade is autonomous vehicles, which are capable of sensing their environment, making their own decisions, and operating without a human driver or pilot. They range in size from robot drones the size of an insect to giant trucks and trains. Initially developed by the military for tasks in hostile or dangerous environments, they are now set to become part of our everyday lives.

A wide range of technologies is involved in equipping vehicles for autonomous operation. These include sensing technologies such as lidar (light detection and ranging), radar, cameras (visible light and infra-red) and ultrasonics; GPS and inertial navigation systems; and local and long-range communications. They have now reached such a level of maturity that, in combination with state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, they are approaching readiness for production for the mass market.

Current applications already include heavy duty industry and extraction operations. For instance, RioTinto are deploying both autonomous heavy-haul railway trains and trucks at their Pilbara “Mine of the Future™” in Australia. Their Autohaul® railway system is due to enter service in early 2015 and 53 trucks are already operational.

Turning to the future, the potential applications of truly autonomous (rather than remotely piloted) vehicles are innumerable. Examples under development include passenger vehicles (including motor cars), road haulage, aerial sensing and photography using both large unmanned aerial vehicles and swarms of small drones, and autonomous submarines for the underwater repair of cables or pipelines.

There are technical and legal obstacles to become before driverless cars are commonplace on our roads – as well as cultural issues. However, the change is under way. For instance: the technology research firm Gartner predicts that, by 2016, three companies will have announced concrete plans for automobile launches that will offer autonomous vehicle technology, and that by 2030, autonomous-driving capable vehicles will represent approximately 25 percent of the passenger vehicle population in use in mature markets.

The potential economic impact is huge. Morgan Stanley Research estimates that savings of US$5.6 trillion could be achieved globally by a shift to all-automatic vehicles. This is made up from US$169 billion savings in fuel consumption, $488 billion reduction in crash costs, and US$645 billion increase in productivity. Given such potential savings, it is clear that there is strong economic pressure to drive the transition to autonomous vehicles.

For several reasons, autonomous vehicles are highly likely to require continuous mobile data connectivity. Safe driving and navigation will depend on access to the most accurate and up-to-date electronic mapping, which in turn will need real-time over-the-air updates. While vehicles themselves will have considerable on-board computing power and storage, their configuration management, software and firmware updates and system performance monitoring can be expected to require a client-cloud connection. In addition, insurance and legal considerations may well drive continuous logging of location, speed and other “black box” parameters.

To enable such information exchanges beyond the reach of mobile terrestrial data communications, vehicles will be able to access mobile broadband satellite communication services which are already in place.

In view of the importance of these real-time links, autonomous vehicle providers and insurance companies may well look to certified high-integrity safety communications such as those provided by Inmarsat to aircraft for cross-ocean flights.

When you assess the potential for autonomous vehicles to change the operating model for your business, remember that mobile satellite communications can extend broadband data coverage across a global footprint.

In my next post I will talk about extreme information management and data analytics.