Fog for 5G and IoT

8The Role of Fog Computing in the Future of the Automobile

FLAVIO BONOMI,¹ STEFAN POLEDNA,² and WILFRIED STEINER²

¹ Nebbiolo Technologies, Inc., Milpitas, CA, USA

² TTTech Computertechnik AG, Wien, Austria

8.1 INTRODUCTION

The modern automobile is a computing‐rich electronic system on wheels, with more than 100 computers per vehicle, and it will become much more powerful in the not too distant future. This trend is motivated by a number of converging requirements and developments, including the need for connectivity of automobiles to sources of travel information and entertainment, the need for vehicle‐to‐vehicle and vehicle‐to‐infrastructure exchanges for accident prevention, the move toward more dynamic and modern vehicle maintenance, the need to rationalize the electronic vehicle control architecture by reducing control system weight and cost of software development, the evolution toward electric vehicles, and, most importantly, the need to assist or even replace drivers.

Indeed, our life today strongly depends on the automobile, a finely engineered element in today’s critical infrastructures. While the primary function of the car is obvious, engineers and scientists have aimed since the automobile’s origins to improve various important factors (we will refer to them as the “four factors” in this chapter): economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, safety, and passenger comfort. Over the last decades, the advancements in computer technology have enabled breakthrough ...