CIE Components in Electronics
Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the largest software framework company for autonomous systems, today announced it has joined the Teleoperation Consortium (TC), and CEO Stan Schneider has joined its Board of Directors.
RTI joins leading technology companies, automotive manufacturers, universities, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in a collaborative effort to identify and address the key issues facing the vehicle teleoperation market. RTI will collaborate with the TC to stimulate growth, increase awareness, and drive industry guidance for development and deployment of autonomous vehicle teleoperations.
Vehicle teleoperation, also known as remote driving, is a critical component of the autonomous vehicle ecosystem. Human remote assistance is needed to bridge the gap between current self-driving capabilities and widespread adoption. Teleoperation will help driverless vehicles navigate difficult situations.
Connectivity for teleoperations is extremely challenging. Applications require high reliability and real-time performance, even though connectivity is often unreliable and has variable bandwidth. Depending on the operator’s proximity, communication may also span local, wide area, public, and private networks.
RTI Connext DriveÒ, the first complete Automotive-Grade connectivity solution for autonomous vehicle development, is the industry’s most prevalent software framework for autonomous systems. It enables easy real-time remote operation over any network. For instance, if the network connection changes as the system moves, connectivity is seamless without reconnecting, secure without renegotiating, and reliable without losing information. Thus, remote operations can continue in real time without interruption. Connext provides the high-speed bi-directional communications needed for teleoperation.
Connext Drive is built on the proven Data Distribution ServiceTM (DDS) connectivity standard. DDS is prevalent in many industries, from defense to medical devices. Using such a popular and capable standard offers automakers the ecosystem they need span diverse real-time environments, fuse sensor information with intelligent control within the vehicle, connect to off-vehicle systems, evolve systems over time, and build in security. DDS adds new capabilities to the many standards important in the automotive ecosystem.
Stan Schneider and the Teleoperation Consortium
RTI CEO, Stan Schneider, holds a PhD from Stanford in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a focus in dynamic control and strategic teleoperation of autonomous systems. He also brings deep experience in consortia, including serving on the Steering Committee and as Vice Chair at the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) for years. He and the company’s automotive experts will work with TC members to determine the direction and technical future of the teleoperations market.
The TC is a non-profit business league that enables the collaboration of companies, organisations, and governmental bodies engaged in developing bidirectional vehicle communications. RTI brings extensive experience to the TC through its work with over 250 autonomous vehicle programs. These include dozens of the world’s leading automotive companies such as Aptiv, Baidu Apollo, Xpeng Motors, and most of the largest electric vehicle (EV) startups.
“Teleoperation is critical to autonomy across industries,” said Stan. “We are already seeing teleoperation used for robotaxis, shuttles, trucks, mining equipment, flying vehicles, military systems, medical robotics and more. Remote humans can assist self-driving cars in unknown or difficult situations, greatly accelerating adoption. We’re looking forward to collaboratively defining the teleoperation design that will move the industry forward.”
“The Teleoperation Consortium is extremely pleased to have RTI join, and very appreciative to have the deep industry knowledge and experience of Dr. Schneider on the board of directors,” said Scott McCormick, President and CEO of the Teleoperations Consortium. “Teleoperations is growing across many verticals besides transportation, and it’s important to provide a mechanism for the public and private ecosystem leaders to table important issues, address architectural requirements, and discuss best practices and gaps or inadequacies in existing standards. With people at Stan’s caliber we expect to be able to advance the growth and deployment of teleoperations considerably.”
