TASCC: Secure Cloud-based Distributed Control (SCDC) Systems for Connected Autonomous Cars

Automotive industry and the consumers are eager for smart features on new cars and more efficient vehicles. Modern cars are not considered as mere means for travelling from point A to B anymore, but rather smart systems that offer personalised services and have the capability to adapt to the user's preferences and needs. They are expected to become intelligent agents that learn from their environments and exploit various sources of information to become increasingly autonomous systems that relieve the driver from tedious tasks, such as parking, and improve safety, efficiency, and desirability of the future cars.

From a wider angle, today's land transportation systems claim about 1.3 million lives and 7 million injuries in road accidents, according to a recent report by CISCO. The increasing number of cars results in traffic jams costing about 90 billion of lost hours for the drivers and the passengers. In addition, transportation accounts for about 26% of the total greenhouse gas emission from human activities. While public transport can help, cars remain to be the desired means of transport according to a recent report by the Department of Transport in 2014.

These market forces in addition to the environmental, economic and social impacts of transport systems demand a timely and transformative research to rethink the automotive control systems and revolutionise vehicle design for future cars.

There have been two trends towards this objective in the past decade: in the one hand the research in autonomous systems, inspired by unmanned space vehicles, gave birth to driver-less concept cars such as Google robotic car; on the other hand, modern wireless communications enabled cars to talk to each other and the roadside infrastructures, resulting in the concept of connected cars. However, driver-less cars remain to be too expensive for commercial vehicles (Google's cars cost about £100,000 only for sensing equipment) and connected vehicles can offer little if not properly integrated into smart and autonomous features.

This ambitious research is defined by a number of world-class academic institutions and leading industrial partners to work with Jaguar Land Rover, a market leader in high end cars, to design and validate a framework that combines the power of connected vehicles concept with the notion of autonomous systems and build a novel platform for cost-effective deployment of autonomous features and ultimately realisation of connected and fully autonomous cars. This can be made possible thanks to modern wireless technologies and the power of cloud computing that allows sharing expensive computing resources (hence, reducing costs per vehicle) and provides access to information that are only available on the cloud.

To realise the ambition of the project, a number of key challenges in the areas of ultra-low-latency wireless technologies, cloud computing, distributed control systems, and human interaction issues will be addressed in this project. In addition, potential security threats will be identified and analysed to assess the potential risks for the public and reputational damage for car manufacturers should such technologies be commercialised. At the end of the project, the technical solutions will be integrated into a single framework and will be validated by example applications, characterising technical and service-level performance of the framework, and providing a basis for the future direction of enhanced automated services.

While the objective here is to ultimately enable affordable driver-less cars, in the short term, this project aims to enable a number of demonstrable autonomous features in a test environment.

This proposal will create new opportunities in the area of smart and connected control which, in addition to the automotive and transport sectors, will address research challenges that will offer significant benefits to a number of adjacent national priorities/sectors including smart cities, telecommunications, insurance and smart manufacturing. With our partners, we are well placed to deliver those benefits [explained in "pathways to impact"].

Chris Holmes (JLR) explained: "[Smart and Connected Cars that increase] digital capability of vehicles is central to JLR's future product development...". Mike Bell, JLR Director of Global Connected Car, stated at a recent SNMT event that "[Connected Car Technology] is certainly one of our top priorities and we are making a significant investment....to make this a reality". To help deliver this vision, we address the challenge of creating a framework "with system flexibility, communication between many components and new ground-up architecture".

In addition to JLR, the TRL and TSC will be actively involved in the definition and validation of the research output creating a unique opportunity for the research to contribute to, e.g., the wider advancement of intelligent transport systems.

The proposal is also highly relevant to the mobile communications sector and, through the involvement of Surrey's 5G Innovation Centre and Telefonica, there are opportunities for the research to contribute to existing applications and to the development of new 5G standards. These will for example, support safety, maintenance and breakdown services, navigation, all of which are of interest to Telefonica.

Thales has identified autonomous vehicles as a future opportunity and has established business interests in UAVs/UASs in defence and civil applications. Thales foresees that the results of this research will enable them to develop new control architectures for these UAVs/UASs. Thales is also interested in how roadside infrastructure, complemented by backend cloud systems as proposed in this research, can play an even greater role in the operation of the UK's future road transport system.

Nokia HERE is a global navigation system provider for automotive industry with presence in 196 countries. HERE maps can be found in 4 out of 5 cars in North America and Europe with integrated in-dash navigation today. Dynamic HD/3D map is an integral part of the SCDC framework, the project use cases, and technology demonstrators. Nokia HERE will use the research outcomes to gain valuable insight to guide the future development of dynamic HD/3D maps.

Considering wider economic impacts, KPMG estimates that the benefits of connected autonomous cars will be "in the region of £51 billion per annum by 2030", with a potential to create about 320,000 jobs across the UK. Furthermore, a recent BIS report notes that from connected cars "a 5% reduction in travel time on roads could save businesses around £2.5bn" and that the global market for smart transport based on digital infrastructures will "be worth $4.5bn by 2018".

The general public will also benefit. KPMG estimates that by 2030, connected autonomous cars could save over 2,500 lives and prevent more than 25,000 accidents in the UK. There are also major quality of life benefits for elderly and disabled citizens as a result of increased mobility. Young adults are also anticipated to benefit from technologies that reduce cost of car insurance by reducing the risk of road accidents - a major concern reported by Association of British Insurers in 2012.

The KPMG report concludes that "Policy makers need to develop regulatory frameworks to allow the industry to flourish." The outcomes from this project will help policy makers gain an insight into the capabilities of the technology and will help in the development of regulatory frameworks. Telefonica will contribute to relevant Telecoms and wireless regulatory analysis in this area.