[Gettyimages Bank]
SEOUL -- To help mobility service operators control autonomous vehicles in cases of emergency, South Korean car parts maker Hyundai Mobis partnered with Ottopia, a software company in Israel, to develop a control tower solution that can remotely move unmanned mobility platforms or modify their routes through screens.
Self-driving vehicles or autonomous robots operate based on data collected through sensors and cameras. Autonomous vehicles operate stably under ordinary circumstances but they can become uncontrollable in cases of emergency such as fire, road accidents, and the unexpected behavior of other vehicles or pedestrians. When autonomous vehicles become uncontrollable, they could threaten the lives of onboard passengers and other people.
Hyundai Mobis and Ottopia will jointly develop a control tower solution for autonomous mobility services including self-driving taxis and robots. Administrators can monitor and remotely take control of troubled cars in cases of emergency. The car parts maker predicts that the solution will play the role of customer service in the era of level-four self-driving cars that do not need a human driver.
The control tower solution would also provide a user-friendly platform as well as a 5G communication modem installed inside a vehicle's electronic control unit for mobile data transmission. Remote vehicle diagnosis and over-the-air (OTA) update features will become available. OTA is a wireless update system for vehicles' operating systems. Users can update the system of their cars just like smartphones.
Autonomous taxis were put to a demonstration in Singapore in 2016 for the first time. Various robot taxis have been tested around the world afterward but they constantly got caught up in small and big accidents. Operators found that because many of the self-driving taxis and shuttles did not have a driver, the robot vehicles found it hard to control the situation.
Hyundai Mobis and Ottopia will jointly seek marketing promotions to attract various mobility service operators. The global mobility as a service (MaaS) market will reach $40 billion by 2030, according to Markets and Markets, a global market research firm.
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