Telstra tests Pedestrian safety device for the Driver-less vehicle era.

With Driver-less cars, the main concern raised by every state and legislation across the globe is the safety standards. Though there is heavy lobbying by Automotive giants, Governing bodies want to make sure that the safety of life & property around the vehicle & the people inside the vehicle are safe. On this account, the Australian telecom company Telstra has come up with an interesting solution that can prove to increase the safety of cyclists & pedestrians on the roads.
What is this? It is a module/app that resides inside the Mobile phone( or a separate device ) that can communicate with the Autonomous vehicles. They call it the Vehicle-to-Pedestrian ( V2P ) technology. As we know, Driver-less vehicles work a lot in coordination with various location based sensors like Lidar, Radar, GPS, Maps etc,. If it can get one more real-time input from the smart phones, which is usually always with the pedestrian – it will know about an upcoming obstacle on the road & an accident can be avoided.

Autonomous car cycle safety

Photo source. Credit: adelaidenow. com. au


With Self-Driving vehicles becoming the talk of the world, Telstra has ambitious plans to become the forerunner providing related services in Australia. The Telco has already tested a Vehicle-to-Infrastructure ( V2I ) technology in October & a Vehicle-to-Vehicle ( V2V ) technology in Feb of 2017. The latest development in this interest is the testing of this V2P technology in coordination with Cohda Wireless.

Mr.Hakan Eriksson CTO of Telstra says, ” This is the first time V2P technology has been trialed in Australia on a 4G network, and is an important step on the journey to fully-autonomous vehicles on Australian roads. The most important outcome of this technology is the increased safety for road users, as the impact of human error can be minimized by helping vehicles communicate with each other and react to their surroundings.”

Many companies have been working on ways to make the Autonomous vehicle itself become super intelligent to understand its surroundings and environment. On the other hand these V2X technologies ( X can be substituted with anything ie. Environment, Street lights, Animals etc. ) take the responsibility of supplying the required data and signals to the smart vehicle on the road, to make things all the more smooth and easy for the intelligent systems built in the vehicle.
With so much data, Telstra can easily become the data hub that gets tons of real-time data about literally anything on the road. Mr.Hakkan believes this will help them to plan for the next phase that is complete collision prevention.
Note: The South Australian government is very active and bullish on backing, promoting initiatives related to Autonomous vehicles. Recently they have backed the trials of electric driver less shuttles, driver less cargo pods etc,. Infact Telstra was one of the recipients of the $10 Million ‘Future Mobility Lab fund’  provided by the Government to encourage local testing and research. Mr.Stephen Mullighan, the South Australian Transport and Infrastructure Minister said in a statement, “The state has been at the forefront of championing the use of advanced technologies on Australian roads.Together Telstra and Cohda Wireless have been leading the charge in the development of this groundbreaking technology which will save many lives and make our roads safer for everyone.”

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