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Autonomous Vehicles, New Mobility & the Built Environment

Autonomous Vehicles Staying the Course with a Fiber Gyro #AVS16

Redundancy of inputs might be the secret sauce that will lead to the expected safety improvements of autonomous transportation. In the above interview, Sean McCormack, Director, FOG/OEM Sales for KVH Industries, talks about KVH’s inertial sensor as a way for an autonomous vehicle to understand where it is at all times, even, in those cases where a tunnel might block a GPS signal.

He explains that their fiber optic-based, gyroscope provides the precision necessary to stay in lanes and detect drift. He doesn’t go into detail regarding how it works, but as pointed out by Jim Hayes in this interview, it is possible to infer the physical environment by its impact on fiber and the resulting change in optical characteristics. McCormack points out that, although it isn’t necessarily ready from a cost standpoint for single occupancy vehicles, there are other higher-value applications, such as shuttle and military, that can more easily absorb the costs. .

Stay tuned for an interview with Nvidia’s Danny Shapiro where he adds more detail about the concept of sensor-fusion and how the neural networks are teaching the cars to be better drivers.

Author Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

Ken Pyle is Marketing Director for the Broadband Forum. The mission of this 25+-year-old non-profit “is to unlock the potential for new markets and profitable revenue growth by leveraging new technologies and standards in the home, intelligent small business, and multi-user infrastructure of the broadband network.”

He is also co-founder of Viodi, LLC and Managing Editor of the Viodi View, a publication focused on the rural broadband ecosystem, autonomous vehicles, and electric aviation. He has edited and produced numerous multimedia projects for NTCA, US Telecom and Viodi. Pyle is the producer of Viodi’s Local Content Workshop, the Video Production Crash Course at NAB, as well as ViodiTV. He has been intimately involved in Viodi’s consulting projects and has created processes for clients to use for their PPV and VOD operations, as well authored reports on the independent telco market.

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