Vehicles are becoming increasingly autonomous thanks to 5G
An autonomous food delivery shuttle, vehicles that detect pedestrians hidden behind a building... These advances are made possible thanks to the development of 5G and the alliance of a dozen major European players in the transport and telecommunications sectors.
Coordinated by the French Automobile Platform (PFA), which represents manufacturers and suppliers in the sector in France, such as Stellantis or Renault, and the European telecom giant Nokia, the "5G Open Road" project, with a budget of nearly €90 million, claims to be part of "one of the largest" programs for the assistance of connected automated vehicles on open roads in Europe.
Deployed since April 2022 for a period of three years, on the Saclay plateau and in the Versailles Grand Parc community of municipalities near Paris, its objective is to rely on the 5G telecommunications networks of Nokia and the French operator Bouygues Telecom to identify "identified use cases" in urban areas.
Examples include Renault cars equipped with sensors in the trunk and control screens to detect pedestrians hidden behind a building or a green and white delivery robot, remotely controlled by an operator and whose trunks can be opened using a QR code.
This prototype "is intended to be deployed in the coming years thanks to the deployment of 5G," Antoine Lafay, Director of Systems and Connected Vehicle Innovation at the French supplier Valeo, told AFP.
Announced as the catalyst for the next "industrial revolution" since its launch in 2020, the 5G mobile network promises to disrupt entire sectors of the economy, thanks to its low data transmission latency, a tenfold increase in bandwidth, and enhanced security.
"Security is an important point for these autonomous mobility services because you can imagine that if you can attack the vehicles and take control of them or disrupt the way they work, it would be a real problem. 5G brings a level of security that does not exist today on 4G or even on WiFi," insists Emmanuel Micol, head of Bouygues Telecom's BtoB (business-to-business) strategy.
If autonomous vehicles are already a reality "in protected areas," "now we need to succeed in deploying them in optimal safety conditions. We will do it as the technology and infrastructure equipment are deployed in such a way that we can expand the range of use and make it universal," explains Tony Jaux, head of the connected vehicles program at the PFA.
"But it will still take many years," he notes, as China and the United States have a head start over Europe in this area, as evidenced by the Waymo (Google) and Cruise (General Motors) electric autonomous taxis that have been operating in San Francisco since last year.
