Lux Research

Autonomous Vehicles

Integrated system of environmental perception sensors, edge processing hardware, real-time decision-making software, and connectivity that enables assistive features, partial autonomy, and full autonomy in consumer and commercial vehicles.

LUX TAKE:

Although the fully autonomous vehicle remains a moonshot, the opportunity for vehicle automation is very real, and clients should look to capitalize on this technology opportunity, as it is already in motion, with assistive features of increasing sophistication found in all classes of production vehicles and autonomous features being deployed in commercial vehicle fleets for mobility services and ...

DSRC declared dead on arrival as a vehicle connectivity enabling protocol: At the end of last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) chose not to pursue the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) mandate proposal that had been under consideration for well over a year. The decision to drop the safety-focused connectivity mandate was a long time in the making, and almost everyone we spoke with agreed that DSRC/WAVE/802.11p was on its way out, and there was at best a weak case for cellular/5G as communication protocols capable of enabling the safety-critical applications expected, such as navigating through crowded intersections. So why is DSRC on its way out? The simplest reason is that these protocols for safety applications are inherently unsafe until they are ubiquitous – even if 90% of cars have it, the lack of a warning still does not mean a lack of danger, as one car in 10 is a potential threat. While it would take until about 2050 to standardize and roll out any technology to every car and piece of infrastructure in the world, the underlying technology will continue to evolve at a pace faster than carmakers' and regulators' ability to keep up. A more likely scenario is one that Lux identified in "Beyond Bluetooth: Vehicle Connectivity and its Impact on Personal and Commercial Transportation" – that mobile devices will support a variety of driving apps that include not just convenience, but also safety features that take advantage of the devices' own accelerometers and cameras; apps like Nexar already have collision warning and V2V, and smartphone penetration is essentially 100% among all drivers, globally. Another interesting app is Payver, which uses a dashboard-mounted phone's camera to find fallen signs, potholes, and changing road conditions and update the right authorities.Speaking to vehicle-to-everything (V2X) protocol trends in general, there would have been a lot of hoops to jump through if DSRC were to succeed and the safety V2X mandate were to ever go into effect. The key takeaway from Lux's conversations was that, just like how there isn't one enabling sensor for the autonomous car, there isn’t just one key communication protocol for safety V2X applications. Due to limitations caused by gaps in network coverage and a lack of infrastructure, we can't rely on an always-connected car, and for these reasons, a hybrid protocol system would have been necessary – which brings with it its own challenges.Although DSRC is dead, connectivity still has major value propositions for future vehicles. Entertainment and safety have always jumped out as go-to applications for connected vehicles, but performance monitoring and management applications, such as for maintenance and insurance, will be the biggest opportunity as the car becomes a core part of the consumer internet of things (IoT). Clients interested in playing a role in the connected car should look to performance monitoring and management as a wide-open playing field.

Categories	Autonomous vehicles
Related companies	AdasWorks, nuTonomy, Oxbotica, Dibotics, EasyMile, Baselabs, Perrone Robotics, Braiq Inc., TuSimple, Nauto, FiveAI, Uniti, PlusAI, Einride

Autonomous Vehicles

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Lux Research analysts and the Lux Intelligence Engine have added the following recent autonomous vehicles developments.

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