This tech can make road deaths a thing of the past
For both ADAS-equipped cars and autonomous vehicles
Story byIoanna Lykiardopoulou
Ioanna is a writer at TNW. She covers the full spectrum of the European tech ecosystem, with a particular interest in startups, sustainabili(show all)Ioanna is a writer at TNW. She covers the full spectrum of the European tech ecosystem, with a particular interest in startups, sustainability, green tech, AI, and EU policy. With a background in the humanities, she has a soft spot for social impact-enabling technologies.
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The three premises for zero accidents
What does this require from a vehicle?
First off, this means that a car’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) — or autonomous tech — needs to have 100% awareness of its surrounding environment at all times.
It also means that the vehicle’s vision needs to be highly precise even in the worst conditions, think darkness, fog, buildings, and other obstructions.
Most importantly though, the data collected by the car’s sensors needs, in turn, to be analyzed extremely fast to provide a sufficient safety margin for action.
Specifically, NPS has calculated that this requires sensing and processing a peak data rate of 100x10¹²bits per second (100 Terabits per second).
That’s10 million times greaterthan the sensory data rate our eyes provide to our brains.
What kind of tech do we need?
To sense and process the required information we need the following:
Plus, NPS has included something called “Atomic Norm,” a new mathematical framework, recently discovered by researchers at Caltech and MIT.
The company has redeveloped the Atomic Norm into algorithms, tailored specifically for radar, LiDAR detection, and signal processing. As a result,it allows massive amounts of data crunching, enabling the vehicle to sense its surroundings well enough to eradicate roadway deaths — something it can do without human intervention.
Can all these actually work?
In 2021, NPS built a pilot-scale prototype platform, consisting of the hardware and software described above, and then tested it at an airfield in California.
The experiments were successful and, according to the company, they proved that 100 Tb/sec sensing is actually viable.In other words, the technology necessary to eliminate road accidents already exists.
Now, NPS is looking for ways to scale up its product and plans to team up with ADAS and autonomous driving system developers, telematics companies, and government agencies to make zero roadway fatalities a reality.
The fact we’re even talking about such a thing shows just how impressive technology can be. And if this system hits the market, it’s mindblowing to think of the impact it could have on the world.
