Guide
5G will disrupt weather forecasts worldwide
by Spektrum der Wissenschaft
Eyes under the road!
17.3.2020
Translation: machine translated
Snow and heavy rain interfere with the sensors of autonomous cars. In order to still know where a vehicle is located, researchers are now looking deep under the road surface.
Normally, GPS, cameras and laser scanners tell autonomous cars where they are. However, the latter two in particular are susceptible to weather conditions: driving snow or heavy rain make the sensors blind to their surroundings, while a blanket of snow on the road or soaked pavement also make it difficult for the vehicle to recognise where the road ends and the ditch begins.
In such cases, an additional sensor could be used that looks several metres below the road: a ground-penetrating radar, which scientists led by Teddy Ort from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are now researching. The device is designed to synchronise its measurement data with previously created maps of the ground while driving and thus determine the position of the car.
In addition to its insensitivity to severe weather, such a method would have other advantages, the scientists write in a press release from the Computer Science and Artificial intelligence Labs (CSAIL) at MIT. Maps of the underground would remain valid for a long time and require little memory. One disadvantage is that they first have to be specially created. In addition, the system has so far run into difficulties if there is more than one lane.
In addition, there are still no miniaturised ground-penetrating radar devices that are suitable for use in self-driving cars. The scientists experimented with an expansive prototype, which they mounted on the rear of their test vehicle. A blanket of snow on the country road reduced the accuracy of the position information by a good two and a half centimetres, while rain reduced it by 14 centimetres. Apparently, water that penetrates into the upper layers of the ground interferes with the comparison with the map data. After all, they did not have to reach for the steering wheel once during their six-month tests, writes the CSAIL. The results will soon appear in the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Ground penetrating radar already has a wide range of applications. For example, it is used in the investigation of subsoil, for mine detection, but also in archaeology.
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, image WITH CSAIL
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