Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles

Dear Colleagues,

Autonomous driving is becoming a promising technology to enhance traffic efficiency and reduce resources wasted on accidents and congestion. It is now very popular due to the public announcement from automakers, tier-one manufacturers, and some well-known IT companies. Some experts predicted that by 2030, more than 50% of vehicles on the road will be automated.

Indeed, such autonomous vehicles could strongly impact the way we use our cars, and, more generally, the overall organization of the transportation in our cities and even beyond (e.g. housing and working habits).
A great deal of works has been carried out to close the gap to market: There are many autonomous cars being tested around the world; legislation is changing and is now considering commercial services. However, autonomy could be obtained through different paths, and some of them could take advantage of an interaction with their environments (e.g. road, smart city, houses, grid, etc.). From augmented perception to full coordination, the cooperative autonomy covers various realities in terms of interactions that the vehicles rely on.

As a first stage, the vehicle only uses its own perception to make its decisions. Extended perception relies on communication between the vehicle and roadside equipment in the surroundings; sometimes with other vehicles or pedestrians, but this is more challenging. This helps the driving system to build and maintain an accurate view of the environment. Therefore, as a second stage, vehicular communication will draw benefits due to a better view of the environment.

The cooperative autonomy does not try to reproduce human behavior; it strongly relies on communication between vehicles and/or with the infrastructure to acquire information on the environment and to make decisions. Part of the decision-making process could be centralized (almost everything for an automatic metro) or coordinated by a roadside component. The decision-making could even be fully distributed, but this puts high constraints on embedded systems and communications. The truth will probably be a hybrid system, with different levels of decisions, and also different types of communication.

It is a good time to step back and look behind the scenes at what are the scientific advances and remaining challenges that we will have to face to end up with a fully cooperative autonomous vehicle. This Special Issue focuses on what makes such cooperation possible and how the cost of the cooperation (resilience, security, complexity, etc.) could be overcome by the advantages (efficiency, safety, convenience, etc.).

Prof. Dr. Jean-Marie Bonnin
Prof. Dr. Arnaud De La Fortelle
Guest Editors

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