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Autonomous vehicles push the boundaries of the edge Posted on : Feb 09 - 2019

Autonomous vehicles may be driving on Texas roads soon. The Texas Department of Transportation just announced its plan to create a Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) Task Force to become a central point for CAV advancement. The CAV Task Force will build on 2017 legislation passed allowing connected and autonomous vehicles to operate on public roads by enabling companies to pursue innovative ideas around CAV technology in a business-friendly way.

Texas is not the only state encouraging the development of autonomous vehicles. In 2018, Arizona opened the Institute of Automated Mobility to facilitate research and testing, and California and Virginia have also created testing facilities. These states are interested in the progress of autonomous vehicles as they have the potential to reduce the number of accidents and improve roadway safety over time.

Benefits of autonomy

Autonomous vehicles also provide opportunities to reimagine personal and commercial mobility with quality of life and economic benefits. For example, CAV technology could enable greater mobility for those who rely on transportation to access health care, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. There are also plans for subscription services that would enable consumers to summon autonomous cars on demand.

For all their promise, autonomous vehicles present enormous computing challenges. Each vehicle generates 1TB to 5TB of raw data per hour [An oft-quoted figure, cited by then-Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, in 2016 - Editor], primarily image files captured by the car’s high-definition cameras and LIDAR scanners. The car needs to understand what’s going on around it, so a large portion of the data is processed by the vehicle’s onboard computers. Because the latency associated with sending the data to data center is too great for real-time decision-making, autonomous vehicles typically carry 2kW to 5kW of compute power. View More