Feature
Connected Vehicles, Floating Car Data and Self-Driving Vehicles
Jacques Ehrlich IFSTTAR Research Director Emeritus (France) Chairman of Technical Committee B.1 Road Network Operations / Intelligent Transport Systems of the World Road Association
Connected vehicles, floating car data and self-driving vehicles: three major steps forward that are already underway and will continue to radically alter the transport system. Could this be called a revolution? Probably not. Today, we're witnessing the maturation of an evolutionary process that got its start over 20 years ago. As of 1990, the first vehicles connected thanks to radio RDS (Radio Data System, 1974) and its channel TMC (Traffic Message Channel, 1990) were actually receiving traffic-related information. The initial prototypes of self-driving vehicles can be traced back to the 1970's, even though it would take waiting for the major demonstration in San Diego (1997) to significantly stimulate R&D efforts in this field, followed by the «Google Car» effect popularizing the concept among the user public.