November 16, 2016
Businesses don’t like to share proprietary information with competitors. But for the sake of consumer safety, the auto industry should open up some self-driving car data, Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich said during a keynote address Tuesday.
Automakers point to trying to make roadways safer as the biggest reason for developing self-driving vehicles. But getting the technology right requires refining software that analyzes radar, camera and other sensor data. The thinking goes that the more data considered, the better the algorithm, the safer the car, Krzanich said.
How does a car react to a particular unsafe situation? The technical details of the response is the type of content Krzanich said the industry might want to gather in a central database. It should enable everyone to get the “fundamentals” right, he said, and companies individually can add redundancies and other safety measures that go above and beyond.
It’s unclear whether his message will find a receptive audience as automakers wrestle with how to gather and store the increasing amount of of performance, environment and user information produced within vehicles. Krzanich noted that in the coming years, a million self-driving cars in operation will be — in terms of data production — the equivalent of adding 3 billion people to the world.
Calling for data sharing is good for Intel because it offers technology for companies to store and share data online. It also could be good for the automotive start-ups that Intel’s investment arm expects to back with $250 million over the next several years. Access to the shared information could help those start-ups develop sensors and software much faster than they could working independently.
This article retrieved from latimes.com
