SARTRE will miss the market window in 10 years
A new EU Project on Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) will allow automated driven cars in convoys on European highways – in 10 years.
The idea behind the project is that you connect the leader vehicle which can be a taxi, truck or any car with a driver who is familiar with the road. After that, the car will join the convoy, follow the lead, accelerate or slow down when necessary which you can relax and enjoy the ride. At any time, you can contact the leader vehicle and leave the convoy and take over the control of your car for example when you reach your destination or need to change roads.
The vehicles in automated mode are able to detect gaps created by other vehicles leaving the convoy and can adjust it to keep a uniform distance. Another ground rule is that a vehicle can only join a convoy in the last position. A convoy can be around 6-8 cars length. Below is a video that shows the SARTRE lead system in action.
However the surprising part in this story is that the system is expected to be deployed in 10 years. This is definitely very long time for such a project that doesn’t require new technologies and especially doesn’t require any changes in the infrastructure. Automated cars that are able to park as well are already available (if you haven’t seen it check out the video below)
In 2020 and beyond, I believe the world should have another vision in terms of road safety and car automation. The infrastructure should be upgraded and connected to the network. Cars should be able to contact the network to get traffic information, position and the network will lead the cars in the system to make sure the passengers reaches their destination in the shortest time. When all cars are equipped with SIM cards, the network will be able to track each car and map its position, even the non-automated ones. The cars will report to the system information about their environment (animals crossing streets or any unidentified object on the road). By unidentified object, I mean anything without a SIM card, that the system doesn’t know about its existence like a box or a branch of a tree. The mobile network can to some extent be applied to organize and orchestrate the cars in the system.
This is the vision that the telecom have for the future.