We’ve all seen the photo above, or even the aircraft itself in person. This is a UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle. These craft have no pilot or other personnel on board, but can be remotely controlled from the ground, automated according to a pre-planned route, or autonomous through complex dynamic systems. While most often referred to in military terms, they are also used in practice for search and rescue, surveillance, traffic control, weather monitoring and firefighting.
The origins of these craft date back to before the First World War, when Austria attacked Venice with an unmanned balloon full of explosives. While some of the balloons successfully carried out the attack, others were pushed back into Austrian territory by the wind. More similar to today’s UAVs, the Ruston Proctor Aerial Target project, under the control of the Royal Flying Corp, saw the light of day on 12.9.1916, when a small aerial vehicle was built that could be remotely guided to specific targets and contained various types of explosives.
From the above, we can see that remotely piloted vehicles have been with us for quite some time, so we can assume that remote control technology has already been developed to the point where it could be transferred to road vehicles.
The benefits of remotely operated vehicles were seen as early as 1987 in terms of better vehicle efficiency, better working environment for employees and better control of transport.
And remote control solutions are already present in the real world – in the video below we see how Volvo Trucks has implemented remote control vehicles for construction sites. Volvo uses a MobileTronics VR01 system to control the vehicles, which can move the vehicle locally via a radio link with limited speed and range.
Burke (2020) in his research came up with a concept for a solution related to remote control of vehicles to a location 18,500 km away over a 4G network. He presented an IP-based solution using 4G cellular network for command and control of a semi-autonomous ground vehicle. The distance varied from a minimum of 18,500 km to a maximum of 20,000 km. It demonstrates the possibility of using a low-cost communication network built in the last twenty years that can enable a truly global integration of the vehicle network. They start from the problem that RF technology is very limited in terms of distance (up to 10 km). They used an STM32 micro controller with UART and IC2 ports for GPS and RF connection. Computationally, the system is supported by a Raspberry Pi computer with a separate digital camera and a Novatel modem that connects the computer to the 4G network. The software solution used was Arudpilot Rover v.3.5.2 running on Windows 10 (virtual) and Mission Planner background. The 4G control uses the MavLink protocol to send commands over the internet. The servers used for the Windows virtual environment were Amazon servers, namely their AWS solution. The latency was around 200 ms and the video delay was 1 second.
This solution, in addition to the other positive impacts it would bring for both drivers and employers, coincides ideally with the development and deployment of the 5G network. This will bring changes such as a significant reduction in latency, an increase in download speeds, increased energy efficiency. The priority of a 5G network is to provide pervasive connectivity, regardless of location (at the top of a skyscraper or on the subway). 5G standards are built using 2G, 3G, LTE, LTE-A, WiMAX and other technologies, and combine them for best performance. 5G also allows thousands of devices to be connected at the same time.
To take the example of the first brain surgery of 2019, which was carried out in China over the network of operator China Mobile with the support of Huawei. The surgeon performed the operation from a location 3,000 km away from the patient himself. Since then, several more operations have been performed in the same way.
We can see that if the network can support such feats and latency is almost zero, we think we could regulate the connectivity of the operator to the remote vehicle in real time in the same way. The problem we see with connectivity is the areas that are not currently covered by a 5G signal. For these purposes, we could use satellite communication during the bridging time, but this is much slower and, above all, expensive.
Of course, as with autonomous vehicles themselves, this technology still needs the support of the authorities and lawmakers. Also, the various safety organisations that are responsible for the safety not only of the workplace but also of other road users are often in the way of progress.
