Intel, Toyota & others create 'big data' consortium for self-driving cars

Several major tech and automotive companies — including Intel, Toyota, and Ericsson — on Thursday announced a consortium that will build a "big data" ecosystem for use with self-driving cars, as well as related technologies like driver assist and mapping using real-time data.

Other partners in the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC) include Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo, and auto parts maker Denso, according to Toyota. The automaker said that data traffic between vehicles and cloud servers is predicted to hit 10 exabytes per month by 2025, creating the need for "new architectures of network and computing infrastructure" to handle it.

The group will also "define requirements and develop use cases for emerging mobile devices with a particular focus on the automotive industry, bringing them to standards bodies, industry consortiums and solution providers."

On Wednesday Intel revealed plans to put over 100 self-driving vehicles on roads, which could conceivably rely on cloud infrastructure launched by the new consortium.

The AECC announcement highlights a potential obstacle for Apple's self-driving car plans. While the company is currently only testing a platform on a handful of existing vehicles, a commercial launch — whether through a self-designed car, or in partnership with others — could require vast amounts of high-bandwidth infrastructure on top of its modern data centers. It's unlikely to turn to third parties however, given its policies towards data security.

Apple might be able to reduce cloud demands with local processing and machine learning, something CEO Tim Cook hinted at in a recent interview.

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21 Comments

BassStrings7

said about 6 years ago

And while they're at it, tell Toyota to add Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to they're cars was well!

rogifan_new

said about 6 years ago

Just another example of how automakers don’t need Apple to be able to build autonomous and self driving vehicles. If Apple really wants to play in this space they’re going to need to build their own vehicle, and maybe it’s not something sold directly to consumers. Maybe Apple becomes its own ride sharing service.

sagan_student

said about 6 years ago

rogifan_new said:

Just another example of how automakers don’t need Apple to be able to build autonomous and self driving vehicles. If Apple really wants to play in this space they’re going to need to build their own vehicle, and maybe it’s not something sold directly to consumers. Maybe Apple becomes its own ride sharing service.

The idea of the ride sharing service just screams Apple to me. By the time this happens, Apple could have committed lines of production and control the lifespan of these vehicles; essentially they could then provide a transportation experience that only Apple can provide.

Question - Couldn't Apple just join this consortium? I don't think this would affect them negatively, if this were the case.

tshapi

said about 6 years ago

AECC announcement highlights a potential obstacle for Apple's self-driving car plans. While the company is currently only testing a platform on a handful of existing vehicles, a commercial launch -- whether through a self-designed car, or in partnership with others -- could require vast amounts of high-bandwidth infrastructure on top of its modern data centers. It's unlikely to turn to third parties however, given its policies towards data security.

Apple might be able to reduce cloud demands with local processing and machine learning, something CEO Tim Cook hinted at in a recent interview.

Rumor does have it that Apple just got permission to test the next gen 5g cellular tech.

radarthekat

said about 6 years ago

sagan_student said:

rogifan_new said:

Just another example of how automakers don’t need Apple to be able to build autonomous and self driving vehicles. If Apple really wants to play in this space they’re going to need to build their own vehicle, and maybe it’s not something sold directly to consumers. Maybe Apple becomes its own ride sharing service.

The idea of the ride sharing service just screams Apple to me. By the time this happens, Apple could have committed lines of production and control the lifespan of these vehicles; essentially they could then provide a transportation experience that only Apple can provide.

Question - Couldn't Apple just join this consortium? I don't think this would affect them negatively, if this were the case.

As I've been saying all along, autonomous vehicles might not be the next big thing.

The car of the future is already here. It's called a Smartphone. Think about it. If you were to clear the slate, look at the modern world and ask yourself, how would I design a transportation system given existing and soon-to-come technologies, like autonomous driving, real-time availability scheduling. Route optimization, etc, no way you'd conclude there should be a car, or two, in every garage. You'd create a technology/software infrastructure to allow individuals to call up the transportation they need (car, truck, van, etc) on-demand. And it would show up wherever they are, or wherever they are going to be, when it's needed. You'd be able to schedule transportation in advance, like the airport shuttles of yesteryear that you'd schedule a week in advance. Über pretty much killed that business, I expect.

Or schedule recurring transportation, such as to take the kids to soccer practice and back. In this case the transportation technology system might suggest a shared van service, that knows the schedules for local after school sports practice and offers up and constructs pick-up and drop-off routes based upon participation; a regular route to gather up the kids and deliver them. Accommodation for security will be considered when children are being transported without accompanying parents, such as real-time tracking and a constant open line of communication, both audio and video streaming from the vehicle to parent's smartphones.

The specific vehicle that arrives can be determined by number of passengers, whether you'll be transporting something large or just yourself, etc. The notion of owning, maintaining, accommodating parking requirements of, insuring, etc, a personal vehicle, for many people, has already begun to feel like 'the old paridigm.'

To create this infrastructure, you need route optimization software, that incorporates the real-time whereabouts of all vehicles in a local fleet. You need scheduling software. You need to deal with remaining charge/range of each vehicle out in service to know when a vehicle can accommodate an additional requested or scheduled route without running out of juice. You need to accommodate stand-by, where the vehicle drops someone off at a location and is requested to stand-by for an indeterminate time while the person goes into a store or bank to run an errand. In short, you need a very sophisticated set of interacting technologies to accommodate smooth operation of a transportation network that provides near immediate responsiveness to a population's constantly fluctuating needs.

If I were Tim Cook, this is exactly the way I'd envision the future, and this is what I'd set out to create. It's not so much about constructing vehicles yourself, but about getting sign-in from all vehicle manufacturers such that their vehicles can work within the envisioned transportation network. And that means that people who do own vehicles could lend them into their local autonomous transportation fleet in order to earn money (this has already been suggested by Musk and makes sense for a maker of vehicles to accommodate, as it helps him sell more Teslas direct to consumers). It means that new rental fleets will simply be staged in large metro areas, with one or more depots that the vehicles come back to for recharging, maintenance, cleaning, etc. And that means that there's a path forward for the rental companies, because they already have staging areas for their existing fleets. The big picture can be accommodated during a transition phase from the world we have today to a world where almost all transportation is shared and autonomous.

Extend this to trucking, inter-city bussing, etc, and the whole thing becomes a future that Apple could play a major role in developing. Without ever producing, on their own, a single vehicle.

Also key to this is that everything Apple needs to do to revolutionize transportation does not require Apple to do any work on autonomous driving, nor does Apple need to build a single vehicle model. Nope, Apple will want to own the end user interaction used to summon and schedule transportation, and it'll want to own the route optimization algorithms and server side scheduling and dispatch. And take a cut of every ride.

There will need to be some tech in each car to pick up the user interaction that began on a rider's smartphone or Watch, once the car arrives to pick up the rider. The car will need a voice interface to interact with the rider. The car will need to constantly ping its whereabouts to the dispatch and scheduling servers, along with its charge level, so that the dispatch system can determine its next pick up and determine when it needs to exit the active fleet and return to a nearby depot for recharging or maintenance. The car will need to contain sensors, like internal cameras, to monitor for left-behind packages, spilled coffee, etc, and report appropriately to riders or to dispatch. The car will need streaming audio/video capabilities to stream to parents when children are riding without adult accompaniment. All of this can be designed as a set of interfaces that automakers can implement in order to be compatible with Apple's dispatch and routing servers, and the vehicles might also be required to utilize Apple's mapping infrastructure.

Once verified as able to serve a ride request, the car is handed details on the location of the rider, and the rider's destination, and it can then utilize its own autonomous driving capabilities to serve the request. And all of this can integrate both driverless and human driven vehicles into the same service. So as vehicles are developed that are licensed for autonomous operation, these can be added to an existing Uber-like fleet of human driven vehicles, both serving together to form a centrally requested and directed/dispatched swarm serving a metrolitan area. Eventually, the human driven vehicles would all be replaced with autonomous vehicles, and the future will have arrived.