Use Cases
USE CASES
provides a platform through which vehicles are able to exchange speeds, positions, intended trajectories/manoeuvres, and other helpful data.
The on-board systems then use this information to derive an optimized driving strategy or a recommended course of action to follow in order to actively optimize traffic flow and avoid dangerous situations.
Equipped cars can share the collected information with other equipped cars in the range through direct communication or infrastructure-mediated communications (V2N2V).
Multi-access edge computing (MEC) running services may collect the shared information on a larger scale and support the cars (drivers or onboard automated driving systems) with recommendation messages carrying suggestions about the behavior to follow in order to achieve a safe and optimized management of the ongoing situations.
In the first part of the project (from Month 1 to M24), 4 use cases were investigated to validate the 5G CARMEN solution, i.e.
I) Cooperative Manouvering;
II) Situation Awareness;
III) Video Streaming;
IV) Green Driving (see below for more details).
In the second part (M25-M45), the project activities have been refocused on the following 2 use cases to demonstrate the need for 5G connectivity to enable L4 automation, thanks to improved awareness of the surroundings, integrated Edge Services a dynamic end-to-end Service Orchestration.
1
Cooperative
and automated
lane-change maneuvers
UC
vehicle may need to change lane from overtaking to the first lane or vice-versa. It can be allowed or not to perform the operation, according to the surrounding context made by
Equipped cars: sharing their own data and also information about their sensed surroundings
Not equipped car: detected and shared by equipped cars
Emergency cars: notified by infrastructure through dedicated service
Emergency cars notification is enabled by a MEC-deployed service that grants a dynamic lane clearance to any emergency vehicle, by informing in advance the other preceding cars
on the same lane, allowing them to move away in time
on another lane, to prevent them to enter the lane when an emergency vehicle arrives thus, clearing the path for the rapidly incoming emergency vehicle.
The lane change manoeuver can be evaluated locally by car or remotely by MEC service - leveraging on higher computational power and information gathered in a wider context - and then communicated to the car. Other cars in the context may adapt to the perceived evolving situation or even receive recommendation messages to that purpose from the MEC service. If the decision is to abort the overtaken action because of the incoming emergency/not-equipped vehicle/lack of safety, then the case falls in the “in-lane manoeuvres” case.
UC
2
Cooperative
and automated
lane-change maneuvers
A vehicle A has another equipped vehicle B preceding it in the same lane: thanks to the shared information, vehicle A can adapt to vehicle B speed and also it can be informed about any other vehicle in front of B that may cause abrupt (and potentially dangerous also for vehicle A) speed change.
In a first scenario a vehicle is on the first lane and plans to exit the motorway in a moderate-high traffic situation, with vehicles in front obstructing the view. A queue or obstacle on the exit lane would require the driver to abruptly change their plan when discovered, with potentially harmful consequences. The information shared by other preceding cars may help in detecting the issue in advance and thus anticipating the decision, easing the decision-making process and the implementation of the decision itself.
In another scenario a vehicle is going to change lane into the overtaking lane when from the car behind it gets an update regarding an incoming car at high speed . Then car aborts the change lane manoeuvre and stays in its current lane. Similarly, as described in previous UC 1, a car is going to change lane, but it is informed about the imminent arrival on the overtaking lane of an emergency vehicle as before, that car aborts the change lane manoeuvre and stays in its current lane, waiting for the situation to evolve.