Dr. Chellaiah has over 30 years of teaching, research and administrative experience, and has worked with multinationals like General Electric Company, SBC communications Inc., NASA, Paine Webber and Merrill Lynch, to name a few.

Autonomous cars or self-driving cars are slowly edging towards reality. While fully autonomous cars (called Level-5 autonomy) are some time away, partial autonomy is around the horizon. Tesla, Nissan, FORD, Audi, BMW and other car manufacturers are working on this technology.

Autonomous cars are nothing but computers and sensors on wheels. They rely on quick sensing and fast response. These cars sense, analyze, interpret and act just the way a human driver does; i.e. they are artificially made to be intelligent to drive on the roads. But, if someone who is standing behind trees or a building and cannot be seen by the human driver, suddenly crosses the road, then there will be an accident. It will be the same in the case of autonomous cars also. The person is ‘out-of-the field of view’ of the sensor.

In 2018, across the globe, about 50 million were injured and 1.5 million died in road accidents, among which more than half involved pedestrians and cyclists.

While technologies are available to avoid vehicle-to-vehicle accidents, not much has been done for the safety of pedestrians.

An Israeli company called Viziblezone has developed a technology to address this aspect. Its Artificial Intelligence based software is embedded as part of the operating system of a smartphone. It can predict the behavior of the person knowing his/her location and if he/she is going to be in danger, a few seconds prior to that, the software sends a beacon signal using radiofrequency to the surrounding region. The oncoming car picks-up this signal, processes it further using AI, and if the person is to be hit, then it alerts the driver who then can act immediately. This is the case when autonomous cars of today are still having a driver, at least in the ‘standby mode’. With full autonomy, the car will be stopped after receiving this beacon signal.

Since almost all people have a smartphone, it is easy to implement this technology. The company plans to give this software free of cost to phone manufacturers to be included in the operating system. Automobile manufacturers can buy the corresponding software for use in their cars. The software does not warrant any change in the hardware and hence can be easily rolled-out. If there is no cellular connection available, the software can directly send the signal to the cars. This will be useful in areas that do not have a cellular phone tower nearby or when cellular networks are congested. Thus, rural areas and remote locations can also be benefitted. The system works even during the night when visibility is low and during fog & snow, and has a range of about 150 metres.

While technologies are available to avoid vehicle-to-vehicle accidents, not much has been done for the safety of pedestrians

As autonomous cars edge towards reality, the issues of pedestrian safety are paramount. These technologies will be of good use. Though the cars cannot see the pedestrians, their presence is noticed and prophylactic actions can be taken to avoid accidents.