News Release

For realizing an intelligent transport infrastructure utilizing 5G ultra-low latency

Real-time recognition of roadway situations by using Wireless Electronic Traffic Mirrors (WETMs) built-in sensors

Business Announcement

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)

[Highlights]

    -Real-time recognition of roadway situations by using wireless communications assumed as the 5th generation (5G) ultra-low latency communications.

    -Acquisition of location, speed and so on for autonomous mobilities such as vehicles by using "Wireless Electronic Traffic Mirrors (WETMs)" built-in sensors

    -Expectation of an intelligent transport infrastructure to avoid mobility collisions and to predict movement.

[Summary]

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: Hideyuki Tokuda, Ph.D.) Wireless Networks Research Center has built the test-bed intelligent transport infrastructure in the Yokosuka Research Park (YRP) utilizing the 5th generation wireless communication system (5G) ultra-low latency, which is purposed to support autonomous mobility in the intersection of roadway environment.

In addition, we have developed a wireless electronic traffic mirror (WETM) built-in camera and location measuring sensors that enables to collect the various situations on the roadway such as road construction, vehicle congestion, etc. Such roadway information collected by the multiple WETMs will be reflected in the dynamic map (DM), which is a database maintaining the roadway information, and will be transmitted to the autonomously moving vehicles. Under the test-bed infrastructure, we have confirmed that it is possible to grasp the roadway situations in real time, especially an area in the vicinity of an intersection with poor visibility. From the achievements, we expect to construct an intelligent transport infrastructure to avoid mobility collisions and to predict movement.

[Background]

In the near future, it is expected that the diverse, autonomous mobilities of vehicles, drones, tractor, etc., will be popularized, and a highly reliable intelligent transport infrastructure will be required to support the safe autonomous movement. In addition, various mobilities may autonomously move on the various road situations with the combinations of congestion, construction, collision and so on. In order to realize the autonomous transport system, it is necessary to grasp the roadway situations accurately in real time. For this reason, it is required for the establishment of a roadway acquisition technology that a large number of sensors with wireless communications collect the road information and a dynamic map maintains the various road information. To verify the roadway acquisition technology, it is necessary to develop the test-bed infrastructure of acquiring the roadway situations by using infrastructure sensors, and to measure quantitatively the performance of wireless communications on a real roadway.

[Achievements] NICT has developed a test-bed infrastructure of acquiring the roadway situations by using the infrastructure sensors, namely as WETMs, which simulates autonomous mobility in the intersection of roadway environment in the Yokosuka Research Park (YRP). We have confirmed the following contents.

-The developed WETM built-in a stereo camera and an LRF (laser range finder) recognizes the position, speed, mobility type, etc. of moving objects and obstacles in real time.

-After reducing the amount of sensing information such the techniques as image compression and clipping, the sensing information is transmitted to an edge server by using a wireless system assumed as 5G.

-On the assumption that the sensing information is reflected in the dynamic map, the edge server recognizes the change of the road environment by extracting the features like position, speed, type, etc. obtained the sensing information from the multiple sensors.

-In order to absorb the difference in transmission time caused by wireless communications, the recognized sensing information transmitted by multiple sensors must be synchronized by time stamp. In the edge server, the sensor information is integrated, and a snapshot of the road environment is generated.

[Future Prospects] In the future, we will conduct the 5G wireless communication system on the test-bed infrastructure, and plan to evaluate the performance with various wireless systems in case the various roadway conditions such that a large number of moving objects are located on a roadway and the moving speed of each is different or the area is wide. We will confirm the functional requirements to be aimed at establishing the technology to realize a more advanced autonomous transport system.

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