Honda is looking to nature to improve the safety of driving, using bio-mimicry of the behavior of a school of fish to inform a new technical concept it’s unveiling at CES called Safe Swarm. Safe Swarm uses vehicle-to-vehicle communication based on the dedicated short range communication standard to provide assistance to a human driver. Safe Swarm essentially means that cues picked up by one vehicle equipped with connective communication tech can pass along information to others in proximity, far before a driver would be aware of anything. Cars can shuttle their collected knowledge down the line, propagating info about a pile-up potentially miles ahead in near real-time to help make it easier for human drivers to take action to avoid problems before they happen. VIDEO Other car companies are working on similar tech; Mobileye’s REM system works on a very similar basis, connecting vehicles equipped with Mobileye sensor tech so that they can share real-time traffic and road condition info to inform ADAS and other autonomous driving features. It’s a bit like a fully automated Waze that doesn’t require driver input. This is another example of tech not imminently bound for production, but which conceptually shows the growing connectivity between cars. Autonomous cars would benefit greatly from something like Safe Swarm, of course, but it also has the potential to save a lot of lives before we reach true self-driving at the consumer level.
Honda [HMC] has developed a form of vehicle-to-vehicle communication called Safe Swarm, modelled on the behaviour of schools of fish. Safe Swarm allows vehicles to pass information along to other vehicles nearby, for example about a potential traffic jam miles ahead, making it easier for drivers to avoid problems before they happen. This concept demonstrates the increasing connectivity between cars, something which would ultimately benefit autonomous vehicles, but with the potential to save lives in the meantime, even before self-driving becomes mainstream. Curation Comment Autonomous electric vehicles don’t just promise smarter cars, but smarter traffic networks. Honda’s Safe Swarm, which is similar to the drone swarm technology http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a24675/pentagon-autonomous-swarming-drones/">demoed in a recent video by the US Department of Defence could mean the end of traffic lights as vehicles happily negotiate their way through junctions with tolerances (and a level of tolerance) that humans could never manage. Regulators will not act in this area until EVs have already hit mass market price points, but as these cars will be safer than their dumb ICE predecessors at every stage of the transition insurers will be able to attract customers by offering lower premiums to those who make the switch. Widespread consumer take-up of offers like this would push down used ICE car prices, which in turn could precipitate a debt crisis in the dangerously sub-prime US auto-loan sector, a risk we’ve flagged several times over the last year.