Transforming Industry Through Data Analytics

Chapter 8. Connected Transportation

Cars are one of the most popular modes of transportation for a significant portion of the world’s population. With their popularity has come a host of problems, not the least of which are pollution, traffic jams, and a dramatic increase in the number of accidental deaths. We are in the early stages of two dramatic evolutions in the automobile: autonomous driving and connected vehicles.

Autonomous Driving

We’ll begin our discussion with autonomous driving. The global automotive market is so large and the technology so revolutionary that the landscape will be very different after it has become an accepted technology seeing wide use.

Additionally, it’s important to make a distinction between “connected cars” and “intelligent cars.” A connected car is a digitized vehicle with built-in wireless networking enabling advanced information and entertainment systems, app integration, real-time location and routing services, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems, and remote diagnostic and update systems. These cars are loaded with sensors generating on the order of 25 GB of data every hour. An intelligent car builds on the connected car with additional sensors and computing systems enabling the car to drive without human direction.

Self-driving cars have been a staple of science fiction for decades, but it is only recently that advances in sensor technology, computer hardware, and machine learning software techniques have ...