Internet of Vehicles Explained: What Is It And Why Is It Important?
The technological revolution of our age impacts all industries. Our desire for more intelligent and connected devices keeps growing. That’s why the Internet of Things is now all around us. In fact, it’s forecasted that the number of IoT connected devices will reach 64 billion by 2025, up from 10 billion in 2018. It empowers physical objects with the ability to communicate and interact with each other.
Our cities are also becoming smarter and more connected. This will allow connected vehicles to slowly transform into autonomous ones, but none of this will be possible without a new advanced network.
A key member, that is among the reasons for such rapid growth in the use of IoT devices is the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). It allows vehicles to exchange information, efficiency and most importantly safety with others as well as with infrastructures using Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), which originated from MANET or Mobile Ad-hoc Network.
IoV is the evolution of that conventional VANET, which refers to the network of different entities, such as vehicles, pedestrians, roads, parking lots and city infrastructure and provides real-time communication among them.
The electronics used for that include infotainment systems, sensors, brakes, and GPS. There’s a clear need for better communication and interconnectivity between vehicles. As they’re turning into smart entities, cars are becoming an essential part of smart cities.
The IoV makes car sensor platforms, which absorb information from the environment, other vehicles and from the driver. All this for safer navigation, traffic management, and pollution control.
As we mentioned, the Internet of Vehicles is a network of cars communicating with each other and with pedestrians handheld devices, roadside units (RSUs) and public networks using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-road (V2R), vehicle-to-human (V2H) and vehicle-to-sensor (V2S) interconnectivity. This creates a network with intelligent devices as participants.
In this post, we’re going to dive deeper into the Internet of Vehicles to understand why is it so important for the evolution of automotive.
How Does It Work?
Satisfying the auto market today is a difficult task. The average modern car now has about 100 million lines of software code. This requires advanced coding techniques and management. The Internet of Vehicles can achieve higher customer satisfaction by providing updates on embedded codes. These are able to offer new services, which helps with increasing the aftermarket service revenue.
As we already noted above the IoV uses all kinds of interconnectivity for creating a social network with smart objects as participants. This leads to the existence of the Social Internet of Vehicle (SIoV). Essentially that’s the vehicular instance of the Social IoT (SIoT).
All the sensors installed in vehicles, smart terminals, and platforms spread across modern urban infrastructure, whilst gathering information, communicate securely. Based on this data, vehicles are guided in real-time.
Furthermore, the IoV connectivity allows manufacturers to identify any defects in their products and optimize reliability. This predictive maintenance lowers risks of failures or emergencies to a minimum. The IoV also gives manufacturers the ability to sell improved software versions with new features.
IoV Architecture
To fully describe what the IoV is, we need to have a look over its architecture. A typical one consists of three layers:
Perception
It includes all sensors within the vehicle. This layer collects environmental data for detecting events, driving patterns, and situations. It also has radio frequency identification (RFID) and perception of the environment, vehicle position and other objects on the road.
Network
As the name suggests, that’s the communication layer. It ensures connectivity to all networks needed, such as WLAN, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or 5G. It supports the interconnectivity models we’ve listed above.
Application
This third layer is responsible for analysis, storage, processing, and decision making about all possible risk situations. It represents efficiency, safety, and infotainment.
All connected vehicles have their vehicular global ID or GID terminal at the core of the IoV. It addresses all problems with RFID, such as lack of speed or limited coverage. What’s most important, the GID provides vehicles with digital IDs, which are vital for automotive cybersecurity.
Why Is IoV So Important?
The Internet of Vehicles is still more of an industry research area. This means only a small part of this research work is available to the public. Being a relatively young technology, its concept still faces some challenges.
Once any security concerns are cleared out, the Internet of Vehicle is set to fundamentally transform the driving experience. The implementation of smart city infrastructure and its communication with our vehicles through the IoV will make it safer than ever.
Here are some IoV applications that make it very important to the automotive industry.
Improved Safety
Tragic statistics shared by the Association for Safe International Road Travel show that nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year, which makes an average of 1,287 deaths a day. The main idea behind the implementation of IoV is to make vehicle transportation safer.
The main reason for car accidents is human error. Fortunately, their number could be reduced through IoV technology. It monitors driving habits and send recommendations to the driver, as well as send them notifications of potential problems or emergencies. In fact, fleet companies are now using this technology in the UK to improve their employees driving experience.
This could only mean that personal vehicles will soon follow this example and implement it as well.
Environmentally Friendly
Generally, the Internet of Things contains lots of information on city roads, which could be used to create green solutions. Singapore is a great example of that. They implement congestion charges and focus on investing in smart infrastructure. This has actually helped them to significantly reduce city toxic gas emissions.
In Jamshedpur, India, people are also working towards improving infrastructure. Most of the streetlights are now IoT connected. This allows to track movement on the road and switch the light when needed. Moreover, this saves on electricity consumption.
Convenience
Among the biggest advantages of IoV is that it improves user convenience. It provides the ability to remotely access a car, enabling a remote door locking, stolen vehicle detection or “find my vehicle” service. The last one can be extremely helpful if you’ve left your car in a huge parking lot.
Such technology is helpful for transportation agencies. Plus, it improves real-time traffic, transit, and parking data, making it easier to manage transportation systems for reduced traffic and congestion.
Lifecycle Revenue
As you already know, smart infrastructure is able to collect data to get insights on car usage, location, condition and driver habits at every second of a connected vehicle's lifetime. This creates a whole new revenue stream for manufacturers.
IoV enables a completely new aftermarket service. Automakers will get to know their customers better, which will give them the ability to offer targeted content or deals, like new paid features or even infotainment content. This personalized approach increases user engagement. With IoV, connected cars will be able to perform tasks for drivers such as payments. They’d even be able to pay for their insurance without human control.
IoV: A Revolutionary Technology
The Internet of Vehicles is a special domain in the Internet of Things. It’s developed for the automotive industry and is now becoming a popular and indispensable platform with information interaction among vehicles, pedestrians, drivers, and city infrastructure.
The IoV provides countless opportunities and every automotive manufacturer could benefit from that and adapt their own strategy. In fact, it’s now turning into a necessity if companies want their products to be competitive.
The Internet of Vehicles is a revolution in the automotive industry that is expected to provide a solution for the biggest concern nowadays — road safety.
Editorial Note:
Sophie Zoria is a guest blogger at The Research Nest. As a passionate author, she shares her thoughts and insights on various domains of technology. To read more articles from her, visit — https://medium.com/@sophie_65309
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