Bosch Announces Predictive Road-Condition Services for Automated Vehicles

© Bosch

BY Danny Korecki

BBotQpl-MastHeadLogo  

 

At the Bosch North America's 2018 Bosch Mobility Experience a few months ago, we learned about up and coming technology such as automatic emergency braking to help save bicyclist lives and experienced first hand the all-electric, 590-horsepower Nikola NZT.

Back at it again on the automated vehicle service front, Bosch is announcing predictive road-condition services for automated vehicles. In partnership with the Finnish weather forecasting firm Foreca, Bosch will be using Foreca's road-weather experts to help predict road conditions. Foreca is one of the world’s leading providers of weather information.

“Combining the expertise of Foreca and Bosch will lead to a new era of road-condition forecasting. Unlike weather forecasts in the media, the Bosch road-condition services take multiple possible forecast scenarios into consideration,” says Petri Marjava, Foreca’s Sales Director.

The Bosch predictive services package is expected to be rolled out worldwide in 2020. It initially will start with weather data, then as more cars become connected on the road they will augment vehicle data along with it.

Currently, SAE Level 4 autonomous features determine a car's task of driving using road type, speed range, and environmental conditions. In the future, Bosch expects to add predictive road-condition services to the mix. Using rain conditions as an example, cars will adapt speed to a lower level in advance of any incident of potential hydroplaning.

Assuming autonomous vehicles take over the road, Bosch will be able to supplement its predictive road-condition services beyond weather data with vehicle data. The data will include information stored on the vehicle's computer system and will be sent to the Bosch cloud via each respective car brand's servers.

With weather data and future vehicle data, Bosch hopes to push information into the hands of the driver to make driving safer.