The INFRAMIX project combines automated and analog driving. We tell you what it consists of.
Automated cars belong to an ever closer future. A concept, that of cars that work alone as automatons on the roads, which may still seem like a milestone in the automobile beyond our possibilities.
Without going any further, at present, it is still impossible for us to see this type of vehicle on the streets. Despite everything, measures are already being taken with which the movement between people and automated cars goes smoothly. And surely everything is going faster than we imagine. Proof of this is the great advances we are seeing about the connected car.
Sharing the road
At the moment, the automated car sector has not given any signs of life at the media level, but it is growing, although it is being in the shadow of electric cars; that, for now, is being more demanded by society.
But, as we were saying, experts already predict that this fact will surely change in a few years. And when that happens, technical dilemmas will come. For example, what will happen when on a mixed road (for automated cars and people) there is incorporation to another road. Surely, there will be retentions due to the inability of automated cars to get up quickly.
INFRAMIX project to combine automated and analog driving
Martin Dirnwöber, an expert on automated transport systems AustriaTech, a federal agency mobility technology-based in Vienna, Austria, has launched the project INFRAMIX. This initiative has the help of large technology companies such as Siemens or TomTom. And its main objective is to optimally combine both driving modes.
It is hoped to be able to unravel the problems of these three factors: road works, incorporations such as access roads to highways, and highways where a single lane could be dedicated to automated vehicles.
Faced with these three questions, various options are being studied to now tackle the problems. The one that grows the most, in the words of Dirnwöber, is that of ” the possibility of using electronic messages to send information about deviations and changes in the road layout to vehicles so that they can adapt to the new layout.”
Such messages would use Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS), which employ a form of WiFi or mobile phone networks to send traffic information to cars capable of receiving it.
Despite everything, for now, this mechanism is in an industrial process, like the INFRAMIX project. What is certain is that is destined for the medium-long term, work will continue from its offices to find a possible solution to the coexistence of automated people and cars.
