We caught sight of this VW Golf at the Bosch headquarters car park in Petaling Jaya. On closer inspection of the car we saw extensive equipment inside the car and some discreet sensors on the front and rear bumpers. When we approached the Bosch automotive aftermarket people to answer our curiosity, they replied it was a vehicle used to read road conditions and traffic signs in Malaysia. What does this mean?
Our guess is ‘the development of predictive road condition technology’.
Which is the development of software for automation level of highly automated driving. This technology depends, among other things, on the road type, the speed range and the surrounding conditions, whether a vehicle can take over the driving task from the driver. In the future, an automated vehicle will make this decision based on the predicitive road condition services from Bosch. This service provides the system with real-time information about the environmental conditions and associated potential hazards long before a critical situation occurs. By this, an automated vehicle knows exactly if, where and how it can drive on its own.
Bosch uses weather data for the realization. Unlike weather forecasts in the media, the predictive road condition services take several possible forecasting scenarios into account. With a worldwide reference fleet and machine learning algorithms, critical conditions can be accurately predicted and localized, maximizing the safety, availability and comfort of automated driving.
As the number of networked vehicles in the market increases, the service based on weather data will be supplemented with vehicle data. Examples of such information are temperature, wiper activity, road wetness or the control interventions of the ESP® anti-skid system. The connectivity enables to transmit this information to the cloud via the back-end of the car manufacturer. All data combined and intelligently evaluated results in the predictive road condition services – and a good feeling of being safely on the road.
We will try and get more information on these tests conducted in Malaysia and share with you.
