The future of vehicles can be seen in Peachtree Corners.
The Peachtree Corners Curiosity Lab recently welcomed guests and companies from the 5G Automotive Association conference to watch live demonstrations of new internet-connected vehicle technologies. Several companies, including T-Mobile, Beep, Commsignia and Bosch, demonstrated how new technology can improve roadways and pedestrian safety.
Beep, a self-driving vehicle company providing riders with first- and last-mile mobility services, works with other technology companies to not only provide rides but also find solutions for driver safety and protecting the environment.
“It’s green, right. It’s an electric vehicle,” Matthew Theurer, the executive vice president of service delivery at Beep, said. “The use of autonomy is gonna be really important as the world switches over to more of an on-demand type transit system to get around.”
Beep is hoping to expand these services, starting in smaller, closed environments to improve the technology and safety before moving to larger areas.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Commsignia, a company that makes vehicle communication technology, demonstrated a product that enables car-to-car communication in real-time to know what may be ahead. Using traffic light infrastructure, the technology can also determine when to slow down if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk, or how long a green light will remain green. The product is meant to increase the safety of everyone.
“I would definitely say that this technology is focusing on safety first, and reliability and security are the most important factors here,” said Gergely Horvath, a pre-sales engineer with Commsignia.
In the future, this technology could be used in the mass production of cars and could communicate with the driver to start slowing down in order to prevent a pileup, Horvath said.
“If you’re driving on the highway, high speed, and there are cars ahead of you and like the fourth car ahead of you there’s hard braking, like really pushes very hard, that you cannot see because other cars are in between,” Horvath said.
Some of the demonstrated technology is already being used in fleets of fire trucks and police cars to help them zip through traffic lights, said Brandon Branham, assistant city manager and chief technology officer of Peachtree Corners.
“We’re able to give a bigger awareness of what’s happening at an intersection more than just our eyeballs ... Now we can see what’s happening before we even get there,” Branham said.
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