Wireless Connectivity: The 6th Sense for Self-Driving Vehicles
by NOVA Science Café
Can wireless connectivity make self-driving cars safer?
About this Event
Accurate, real-time, and comprehensive situational awareness of the road environment is critical for the safe operation of any vehicle, whether it is human-operated or self-driving. Although almost all self-driving vehicles rely on sensor technologies such as LIDAR, RADAR, and vision systems to gather data about the surrounding road conditions to achieve situational awareness, wireless connectivity between cars and nearby infrastructure is often overlooked in the discussion about autonomous vehicles. In fact, wireless connectivity with other vehicles, roadside units, and remote services offer significant advantages over all these other sources of information.
In this talk, Alex Wyglinski, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will present the current state-of-the-art in vehicular wireless connectivity, including approaches that facilitate vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Some of these innovative techniques are based on bumblebee behavioral models and advanced signal processing algorithms that manipulate the electromagnetic properties of wireless signals.
After the presentation, audience members will get a sneak peek at the new NOVA film Look Who's Driving airing on Wednesday, October 23 at 9 p.m. on PBS.
