Smart Solutions for Smart Cities
By Praveen Kumar, Head of Engineering — Sensorics, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Continental Automotive India
Today, half the world’s population lives in cities or urban areas, and as per United Nations’ report, by 2050, two-thirds of the global population will live in cities. This growth is not only in terms of scale but also complexity.
Around 1.3 million people die every year in traffic accidents worldwide. A growing volume of traffic leads to increased vehicular emissions and higher air pollution, which has a negative influence on life expectancy. Over 1.2 billion people spend more than 50 minutes a day in a vehicle — a majority of the time in traffic jams, especially in Indian metropolitan cities.
City authorities and other key players in the urban ecosystem are constantly looking for ways to make mobility more comfortable and safer for the users and sustainable for the environment. For ‘Smart Cities’ to grow from being a concept into a winning urban strategy — technology is the key — be it for improving the quality of urban life, improving environmental health, or in ensuring services to citizens. E.g. Smart, electrically powered, and shared vehicle concepts will help reduce the traffic density in cities. Even the rural areas will benefit from enhanced accessibility of transportation. Those areas will become better integrated into the transportation network and therefore will be more connected to the nearest big cities.
Digitalization can transform our cities into intelligent mobile ecosystems. To actively shape this transformation, Continental is integrating its extensive automotive expertise in the infrastructure of tomorrow — to create/bundle a suite of solutions and technologies for future cities. Solutions that foster mobility intelligence, ease traffic congestion and reduce accidents and pollution, addressing the most critical factors of urban mobility.
We are already working together with a few cities globally and supporting them with a range of ‘smart city’ solutions. The aim is to transform these cities even safer, more environmentally responsible, more productive, and to meet the demanding mobility needs of their inhabitants.
Mobility Solutions and Technologies for Smart Cities
Imagine you are driving with a friend and suddenly, your phone rings. Your colleague is on the call and urgently wants you to look at a document. Instead of pulling over, you switch the car to ‘autonomous’ mode, and view the document on the windscreen, while you are still on the call. Midway through the call, you realize that you need to split ways with your friend. So, you order your car to book a shuttle for your friend.
In a few minutes, your friend’s shuttle arrives — a robo-taxi — a driverless, self-driven little mini-bus that has the location pre-loaded. Now, you can focus on your work, till your car reaches home and parks itself in its designated slot. As you approach your building’s entry gate, you see a four-legged robot coming out of a Robo-taxi, carrying your delivery orders.
Does it seem like a future far, far away?
Well, it isn’t!
The technology for autonomous vehicles, which Continental uses in the driverless, self-driving shuttles, is ready for series production and is already in use worldwide. For example, in Singapore, it is currently being used in several pilot projects on manageable, public routes as well as in demarcated areas at company sites, university campuses, or trade fairgrounds.
With many urban users preferring to car-share, city fleet management systems can provide users’ access to shared mobility simply and efficiently, with easy administration for the fleet operator and excellent usability for users and operators. Continental has successfully tested this approach in Asia, in the US as well as in Europe. In Kansas City, Continental together with Avis Budget Group introduced a keyless rental experience providing seamless access for customers since 2017.
Talking about Continental’s Intelligent Intersection innovation concept, it would be a perfect fit for smart cities. It is an end-to-end solution comprising a sensor set for the intersection, the powerful sensor (radar, camera, lidar) fusion algorithms that generate a virtual representation of the intersection, and the V2X Communication units, which are able to exchange information between intersection and connected vehicles . While the concept is integral to protecting vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists, it can also support drivers in complex intersection traffic scenarios like preventing left-turning cars from running head-on into traffic that approaches from behind an occlusion. In addition to safety aspects, the concept also uncovers potential opportunities for traffic flow improvements to ease today’s pain of congested cities.
While Continental’s first comprehensive Intelligent Intersection pilot was with the city of Walnut Creek, California, further research deployments were added to further investigate the potentials of the concept, for example in Columbus, Ohio.
The concept can enable the collection of information and statistics from intersections, which are often high-incidence zones. The collected information can be processed and analyzed on the City Data as a Service (CDaaS) platform to determine critical areas, so specific safety plans can be implemented to minimize accidents and contributing to Continental’s Vision Zero — a future with zero fatalities, zero injuries, zero crashes.
Continental’s (CDaaS) platform is the foundation of Mobility Intelligence. Its purpose is to implement the mobility intelligence concept by mobility service delivery based on meaningful and enriched data with regards to time-to-market, quality, and costs.
Technologically, we are moving towards smart cities continuously. However, there are several hurdles in this transformation.
Challenges: Smart cities
Cyber Security
Autonomous mobility and intelligent infrastructure require secure connections, be it between vehicles or the surrounding ecosystem. This might tempt hackers to break into the system. Hackers can take control of the vehicles and cause malfunction of controls, this can be a serious threat to vehicle safety and also endanger the lives of the driver, passengers, and the ones surrounding the vehicle. The embedded features in connected and autonomous vehicles help cars of the future navigate heavy traffic and make split-second decisions on the road. Still, its vulnerability to hacking requires our attention.
A comprehensive approach, which involves the three pillars — Prevent, Understand, and Respond, is the need of the hour. Features like quick Over-the-Air (OTA) update solutions can enable firms to react and install security patches to immunize their fleet against the attack’s nature.
From the first day of vehicle development, the components security processes need to be incorporated in the software development, product, and system design phase. DevSecOps practices ensure that developers are using coding practices that are less vulnerable to attacks. Instead of taking a reactive approach, a more proactive approach has to be taken, i.e., security experts need to ‘shift left’. However, this does not mean we need not have monitoring systems to identify any security breach. The Security Operation Centres (SOCs) are needed to ensure real-time detection of any such violation and tackle it in real-time. The SOCs would also help us identify the gaps and do quick patches to avoid long-term exposure to on-road vehicles’ vulnerabilities. Lastly, security processes should be continual.
Legislation
India is in the early stages of developing smart cities across the nation, and already has some policies such as India’s Open Data Policy, data protection standards under section 43A of ITA. In the coming times, India would require a stricter and robust approach towards this. Taking inspiration from policies across the world, India needs a strong regulatory governance framework.
The population is growing in both scale and complexity thus it is vital to have a well-planned structure and systematic implementation of technologies to ease living, raise living standards, better governance, and transportation that is more accessible, convenient, and safe, among others. Continental is at the forefront of technological innovation, and is poised to provide next-gen connected, autonomous, and smart mobility solutions to enable smart cities.
About the author
Praveen Kumar is Head of Engineering — Sensorics, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Continental Automotive India. A software engineer by education, Praveen has a diverse career spanning 27years, across Avionics, Consumer Electronics, and Automotive. He has worked through the entire spectra of engineering, ranging from software development to leading business development.
Praveen joined Continental India in 2014, spearheading the ADAS business unit. Under his leadership, ADAS BU has set up the engineering center responsible for Continental’s ADAS portfolio in APAC region. With work experience in the USA, Europe, and China as Engineering and Business Development manager, he understands the intercultural engineering operations of the automotive world, which enables him to drive trend setting technologies of the future.
