Cooperative Mobility Ecosystem detailed by Honda at CES 2017
By Robin-Leigh Chetty 6 January 2017 | Categories: NewsJapanese vehicle maker Honda took the stage at CES 2017 recently, detailing in full its ambitious Cooperative Mobility Ecosystem. What makes this endeavour interesting is the fact that it's not simply a connected car or a self-driving one, but rather an entire platform of artificially intelligent vehicles communicating with one another.
Honda shed greater light on the Ecosystem, after teasing its plans late last year. It consists of a number of different technologies, the first of which is Safe Swarm, designed to mimic the behaviour of a school of fish. To that end, Safe Swarm would feature a variety of vehicles all embedded with a dedicated short range communication system, allowing the cars to 'talk' to one another.
The data gathered from the communication could potentially be put to use by the correct AI system to better handle the flow of traffic, as well as clearer paths for emergency vehicles to react to on-road accidents, for example. As such, the Safe Swarm system will require collaboration with other tech companies in order to be implemented.
In that regard, Honda has already begun partnering with other companies for innovative solutions. The Japanese vehicle maker is working with the likes of Dreamworks and Leica to create in-cabin virtual/augmented reality and driver displays respectively.
Moving on to concept cars, Honda did not disappoint in that aspect either, revealing in full the NeuV (pronounced new-v) electric autonomous vehicle. The car's design stems from the fact that privately owned vehicles sit idle for 96% of the time, according to Honda.
Consequently, the NeuV is designed to be an autonomous ride-sharing vehicle, akin to services like Uber and Lyft. A NeuV owner could then for example send their car off to pick up and drop off other people (for a agreed fee of course), while the owner is not using the vehicle. For now, the NeuV remains a concept, with Honda not disclosing when they'll plan to put the car into the prototype or testing phase.
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