Bosch, the world’s leading provider of technologies and services, recently signed a cooperation agreement with Orange Business Services. The Bosch Engineering Center Cluj will begin testing new functions for automated vehicles through Celluar-based Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) communication using 5G technology. The C-V2X communication technology is an important pillar of automated and networked driving.
“We are pleased about the start of this new partnership and I am convinced that our know-how, our expertise and the latest technologies in combination will lead to new, outstanding results in the field of connected and automated mobility,” said Cătălin Golban, Head of Engineering Systems Vision department at the Cluj Engineering Center.
The R&D department in Cluj-Napoca is actively seeking to improve existing solutions and develop new solutions in the field of automated and connected driving, with a focus on the advantages of 5G technology. For example, the Bosch engineers in Cluj are using test cars that are equipped with 5G technologies and enable the transfer and visualization of the collected data in almost real time and significantly facilitate the development process of automated and assisted driving solutions.
The aim of this project is the continuous optimization and innovation based on data collected in real traffic scenarios. This new communication technology enables the rapid transfer of data from the test vehicles to a central server or a cloud infrastructure, so that the engineers working on automated and assisted driving technologies can process and analyze the information quickly. The 5G-based C-V2X communication is a technology with great potential to meet the demanding requirements of this functionality and to provide the required data exchange performance. In addition, the new communication standard enables Bosch engineers or employees from all over the world to visualize the data such as video, radar, ultrasound or lidar recorded by the test vehicle’s sensors.
This new project will lead to relevant advances in this area for both companies.
“Our collaboration with Bosch is an important step in the development of the Collaborative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) ecosystem from Romania. With more advanced CCAM services, automated driving is seen as a technological highlight that will shape the future mobility concept and improve the quality of life through the provision of traffic safety as well as additional environmental and information improvements. Connectivity, more precisely 5G C-V2X communication, is seen as the technological enabler of CCAM services, which require a network with high reliability, speed, capacity and extremely low latency. Given the extremely low latency of the Orange 5G network, vehicles with software developed by Bosch can use advanced functions such as edge computing and network slicing to exchange data with the cloud very quickly, ”says Cristian Patachia, Development & Innovation Manager at Orange Romania and coordinator of the 5G laboratories.
Connected vehicles in the Bosch Engineering Center in Cluj
The development of car connectivity technologies is one of the strategic thrusts of the Bosch Engineering Center in Cluj. So it is of great interest to explore the potential of 5G technology in this regard. At the same time, the Cluj Engineering Center is developing software and algorithms for processing data from sensors such as radar, video and ultrasound for assisted and automated driving. In addition, the combination of 5G and sensor technology brings added value to the innovation and development process. With an increased transfer rate and lower latency, 5G is geared towards the connectivity of machines and users. On the one hand, it will enrich the product development methodology and, on the other hand, it will lead to expanded functions, particularly in the area of driver assistance and automated driving.
The future of mobility: automated driving
At the Engineering Center in Cluj, Bosch is helping to shape the future of mobility by developing projects in the field of automated and assisted driving. Functions such as automatic emergency braking to avoid collisions with foreign objects such as cars, pedestrians, cyclists and animals, lane keeping or automatic parking can save lives and improve driving comfort. Complementary to radar or ultrasonic parking sensors, more and more vehicles are now benefiting from built-in video cameras. These cameras receive information that they then process using embedded electronic computing systems. The video data received by the cameras is processed in real time using advanced methods of computer vision and artificial intelligence in order to determine the positions of traffic objects, vehicles, pedestrians, the position of the car in the lane and the meaning of traffic lights, traffic signs or lane markings.
A foretaste of a networked world
As a leading IoT provider, Bosch offers innovative solutions for Smart Home, Industry 4.0 and connected mobility. Connectivity opens up new possibilities for the development and improvement of vehicles, mobility and all kinds of services. That makes life safer, more efficient and more convenient. Bosch networks systems and services inside and outside its value chain and transforms them into intelligent solutions. More and more smart products and services are being networked in order to generate added value for their users. It is estimated that there will be 25 billion connected devices by 2025, compared to just 14.2 billion in 2019.