Mitsubishi Electric and Here are working on a new V2V system for cars
The road hazard warning system has undergone two successful real-world tests in Japan and Southern California.
Mitsubishi Electric -- no, not the car maker, but related -- and a Dutch company called Here have been working on a vehicle-to-cloud-to-vehicle information system that would allow a car to report a road hazard and share it with other vehicles.
The system is called Lane Hazard Warning, and unlike a lot of V2V systems, this one just completed its second successful real-world test, the two companies announced today.
The first real-world test of the Lane Hazard Warning system took place in Tsukuba City, Japan, in winter 2018. The second test took place in Southern California and concluded at the end of April. Pretty cool, but what exactly does the system do?
First, Lane Hazard Warning uses a vehicle's sensors to identify potential road hazards such as wrecked cars, big potholes and slippery surfaces. It then flags those hazards and which lane or lanes they affect and sends that data to the cloud where other vehicles equipped with the system can access it.
"When something unusual happens on the road ahead drivers often have very little time to react, and that can put them and their passengers at risk," Hiroshi Onishi, executive officer and group president of Automotive Equipment at Mitsubishi Electric, said in a statement. "Together with Here Technologies, we've developed a new system designed to give drivers a few valuable extra seconds or minutes to prepare for a potential danger on the road ahead, such as by switching lanes or simply driving with greater caution. "
The two companies are planning to make the system available to automakers for testing, with the ultimate goal being to license the technology out to companies developing self-driving cars or vehicles with advanced driver assistance features.
