The Ex-Pentagon Analyst: DLT To Provide The Darwin Effect in Global Transport Industry

The world is gradually preparing for totally autonomy transport system. Although the trend is already clear, the technical and economic issues still remain. The competition between teams of developers and automobile companies has grown into an active economic race between the countries.

It is expected that the transport autonomy will solve a number of problems such as the risk of an accident due to the human factor and the roads congestion. And it can also provide an opportunity for the driver to become a passenger and just relax or do his own work. According to some estimates, in just a few decades, unmanned vehicles will allow humanity to save about $1 trillion in total and the number of fatal accidents will be reduced by 70%.

According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG) the total market volume of unmanned vehicles could reach about $42 billion in the total structure of world sales by 2026. The unmanned vehicles market share of 12-13% is expected. It is about 14 million of self-driving machines that will go to sale and the 500 thousand of them will be totally autonomous. McKinsey Global Institute company in its forecasts came to the conclusion that the total share of unmanned vehicles (both fully and semi-autonomous) will reach 15-20% by 2025.

The full autonomy of transport is expected by 2040. According to the PwC audit company report, by this time all cars will be electric vehicles, which means that two of the most important problems for all mankind will be solved - the environmental pollution and the depletion of natural fuel.

In an exclusive interview for Bitnewstoday.com Ritukar VIJAY, who has been developing land-based and aircraft autonomous vehicles for more than 10 years, also confirmed that all autonomous vehicles will be electric, marking the date of transition to a totally autonomous transport system on the road between 2025 and 2030. He also added that vertical take-off and landing aircraft testings will begin in 2025.

The first attempts to keep up with the future

The development of unmanned transport itself is no longer the priority for governments, but the relevant legislation to control its effective implementation and operation in future is.

In December 2015, California authorities released a preliminary list of rules for unmanned vehicles. The government believes that the legislative framework is necessary before this transport becomes available. China has also announced its set of national rules for testing self-driving cars in an effort to keep up with the US and accelerate the development and implementation of this technology.

However the race is becoming increasingly fierce. The whole world is waiting for the launch, which was planned by Mercedes company together with Nvidia at the end of 2018 - beginning of 2019 in California. During the tests there will be the driver in the cabin for safety.

Google, MIG (Made in Germany), AKTIV, VisLab, Cognitive Technologies, Tesla Motors are also actively engaged in the development of autonomous vehicles on the world market.

Taxi driver or the security guard - robotaxi tests are started

Since August 27, 2018, the world's first unmanned taxi service has been started its work in Tokyo. Although the machines operate in a fully unmanned mode and make maneuvers and stops in the traffic flow without human intervention, the safety is still provided by the driver behind the wheel. In addition there is also his assistant in a cabin. The trip costs 1500 yen (that's $13.5) one way of the established route of 5.3 km.

Possible, the precautions are also dictated by this year resonance accidents with fatalities with the participation of Uber and Tesla Motors unmanned vehicles.

On may 29, the former head of the National road safety service of the United States Mark ROSKIND said that the death of people at the stage of unmanned cars testing can not be avoided. Aptiv company (ex Delphi), the manufacturer of automotive components, together with the ride sharing service Lyft launched 30 unmanned vehicles in Las Vegas. There will also be a driver: in case of technical failure he will be able to take control of the vehicle. But in the near future, the company wants to relieve passengers from this "insurance".

5G - the hope of the ascending system

Primary problem that doesn’t allow the whole world to make the transition to full autonomy of transport is the speed of GPS map updating system for estimating of the real situation on the road. Partly this problem can be solved by cloud services and constant exchange of information between cars. But here comes the question of fast data transmission and the availability of stable Internet connection.

Greg KERR, the founder of the green blockchain company, in an exclusive interview for Bitnewstoday.com said that such congestion is inevitable because of the incredible computational requirements that cause delay in networks. "As it stands today an autonomous vehicle must communicate with a centralized computation hub. The computation needs in this system will quickly overload networks and not allow for the millions of real-time decisions needed to handle a morning commute”.

Undoubtedly, the main hope for building an autonomous transport system now is the new 5G connection, the main advantage of which is the device-oriented approach.

Cars can be equipped with sensors that read all kinds of information about the traffic situation. Based on these data, the trip can be managed automatically.

The Verizon Mobile announced the launch of 5G networks on October 1 this year. We will switch to the mobile Internet speed of the new generation — up to 300 Mbit per second, and up to 1 Gigabit at the peak.

Here, the victory at the technology race remains for China: the OPPO company decided to be engaged in the production of smartphones of the future. The mobile device will easily support the 5G Internet network. China is rapidly ahead of the US in this technological battle, since the US smartphone leader, Apple company, lags behind at least in a couple of years, due to the fact that “apple devices” still do not go beyond the scope of 3G and 4G.

DLT will create a Darwin effect

According to Greg KERR the second obstacle that is associated with the problem of the volume of information transmitting and storing, can be solved with the use of DLT-technologies: “At its core the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning need data: the more data they have, the more learning can take place. The blockchain and other distributed technologies will create never-been-seen before levels of data. There will be a Darwin Effect among industry competitors, where the organizations, that put more of their operations on distributed systems, will create more data to be observed by machines. Organizations that utilize machine-observation will lead to computer-identified efficiencies, thus will outperform the competitors” - he said.

At the end of January 2018, Ericsson announced its intention to test unmanned buses on the Stockholm city streets. The company has secured the support of Swedish public transport operators and a number of local companies. The project aims to test autonomous transport in real conditions. Self-driving buses will move among the ordinary cars, cyclists and pedestrians.

Greg KERR, who is also an ex-Pentagon analyst, believes that software development for distributed hosting and computer networks will evolve to make our highways their own meshed networks that increase efficiencies as more nodes (vehicles and passengers with IoT devices) participate in the network.

“Cars will make computations between themselves on our roadways that will facilitate the needed computations by sharing the computation loads among participating devices, like cars, street lights, and road signs. In the near future fixing at a stop sign will be involve execution of a smart contract between the stop sign and your vehicle. Further, the computations needed to navigate the vehicle behind you will originate between your vehicle and the one following you’ - he said to the Bitnewstoday.com

The continuation of the unmanned transport topic read in the following article: what the flying autonomous vehicles will look like and how technology will change the future transport system.