NL, Remote Driving, Remote driving using 5G positioning

Use Case Category: Remote Driving
User Story: Remote driving using 5G positioning
Location: Dutch (NL) trial site

According to 3GPP TS 22.186 R16, Remote Driving “enables a remote driver or a V2X application to operate a remote vehicle for those passengers who cannot drive themselves or a remote vehicle located in dangerous environments. For a case where variation is limited, and routes are predictable, such as public transportation, driving based on cloud computing can be used. In addition, access to cloud-based back-end service platform can be considered for this use case group”.

User Story: Remote driving using 5G positioning

In situation where the AD vehicle is unable to automatically drive further (due to a failure or unexpected driving condition), a remote operator takes over control of the vehicle and drives it to a point where AD can be resumed. As an example, this can be in situations like border control, construction zones and inclement weather. To tele-operate a vehicle, the data from multiple sensors should stream their information (synchronised and with low latency) to the operator and at the same time have low latency in the control task of manoeuvring the vehicle in real time.

One example for tele-operation is when an AD vehicle is automatically manoeuvred to a bay/slot assigned by border control remotely/via 5G and local edge computing for monitoring actions of the autonomous car by the border agents. For automated manoeuvring in a complex border-post environment, precise localization (of the car in surroundings by the car, plus potentially of the car by the infrastructure) is needed. In the NL trial, tele-operation will be tested by driving the vehicle from the emergency lane to an assigned slot on a rest area along the A270. However, testing of localization services will be carried out at the TU/e campus as it needs special infrastructure, e.g., fibre optical backbone and multiple 5G small cells, available at the TU/e campus for high accuracy localisation services and low latency. New 5G technology based on adaptation and integration of 5G beam steering and MIMO will be used for localization and positioning. The 5G (mm-wave) based location can serve as a redundant localization system and useful in scenarios such as border customs control with gates with a roof covering.