The automotive industry and the wireless industry are joining forces to harness the power of big data from connected cars. The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium is a partnership formed by Toyota, Ericsson, Intel, NTT DoCoMo, and Denso. The companies said their goal is to “develop an ecosystem for connected cars to support emerging services such as intelligent driving, the creation of maps with real-time data and driving assistance based on cloud computing.”
The announcement came one day after consortium member Intel announced plans to put 100 autonomous test vehicles onto the roads in the United States, Israel and Europe. The chipmaker has just closed on its $15.3 billion purchase of Israel’s Mobileye, which makes artificial intelligence technology for connected cars.
Toyota said the focus of the new consortium will be increasing network capacity to handle the data connected cars are expected to generate. The company said that ten years from now, vehicles could be generating as much as 10 exabytes of data per month, and this will require new network architectures and more edge computing capabilities.
Toyota says it holds more patents in the area of autonomous driving than any other company. The company’s Toyota Research Institute displayed an autonomous test vehicle this year at California’s Sonoma Raceway. At that time the company said one of the steps on the way to fully autonomous cars will be driver assistance technologies that monitor conditions and alert drivers to possible problems.
Ericsson brings its connected vehicle cloud solution to the new consortium. The offering includes telematics, infotainment, fleet management, advanced driver assistance, and autonomous and software defined vehicles. Ericsson offers each of these solutions separately or in combination.
The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium is expected to grow in the months ahead. Toyota said the members hope to expand by reaching out to “relevant global technology leaders.”
