Panel to Showcase PoCs by AECC Members DENSO, KDDI, Nexar, Oracle Japan, and Toyota that Use AECC’s Low-Cost, Distributed Edge Computing Approach to Meet Data Needs 

WAKEFIELD, Mass.–(September 13, 2022) — Connected vehicle services are in everyone’s near future, but to bring them to life will require a much larger data transfer capacity from the vehicles to the edge and cloud than what is available today. To address this issue, the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC), a member-led consortium of OEMs, MNOs, and Cloud and App providers, today announced a panel of AECC experts from DENSO, Dell, and Nexar will join SBD Automotive to lead an ITS World Congress panel discussion titled “Edge Computing and the Future of Connected Services.” The panel will take place on Tuesday, September 20, 2022, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. Pacific, at ITS World Congress, Los Angeles. To register for ITS World Congress, visit https://www.itsamericaevents.com/world-congress/en-us.html. 

The AECC panel will include the following speakers: 

  • Alex Oyler — Director of North America, SBD Automotive (Moderator); 
  • Ludovico Fassati — AECC member, and Senior Vice President America, Nexar  (Presenter); 
  • Roger Berg — AECC Communications Vice Chair, and Vice President of DENSO’s North American Research and Development Group (Presenter); and 
  • Said Tabet — AECC Board member, and Distinguished Engineer Dell Technology  (Presenter) 

The panel will highlight the below AECC Member PoCs to demonstrate how to unlock the connected vehicle services opportunity for services using the AECC’s distributed edge computing approach and reference architecture.

“At ITS World Congress, AECC members, such as DENSO, Dell and Nexar will share how they are leading and shaping the success of the connected vehicle services industry through their proof-of-concept demonstrations. Executed and utilized in real-world environments, these PoCs demonstrate how to meet the expanding data management needs of connected vehicle services, including HD mapping, intelligent driving, mobility-as-a-service, and more,” said Ken-ichi Murata, President and Chairperson of the AECC, and Fellow at Connected Company at Toyota. “I encourage organizations within the ecosystem to apply to the PoC program to work with one or more of our member companies to examine the best ways to process vehicular data in multiple clouds and edge computing environments.” 

AECC PoC #1: Enabling a Geolocation Parking Service with AECC Distributed Edge Architecture – KDDI, Nexar, Oracle Japan 

AECC’s newest member-led PoC, conducted by KDDI Corporation, Nexar Inc., and Oracle Japan, demonstrates how connected vehicle geolocation services could reliably find free street parking spaces in a business district. To keep costs low, the PoC used regular cars, standard dash cameras, 5G network connectivity through two existing edge networks and a standard commercial cloud service for vision AI-based processing and data analytics. The test not only verified AECC’s concept for scaling mobility services using existing edge and cloud infrastructure but showed that the communication path between a car and edge clouds can be dynamically switched based on a car’s geographic location without requiring cached high latency resolution interruption or data concentration infrastructure. 

“Using the AECC’s automotive edge computing approach is the key in scaling the geolocation parking service in near real-time and cost-effectiveness,” said Bruno Fernandez Ruiz, CTO and cofounder of Nexar. “The PoC was able to reduce locally produced data and minimize unnecessary transmission of that data to and from the cloud data centers, delivering them right back to connected vehicles. Plus, the PoC’s scalable distributed edge computing approach has been able to bypass all challenges of centralizing geolocation data from millions of vehicles. We’re eager to be working with these companies to solve the connectivity and computing challenges of the future.” 

AECC PoC #2: Using ODT for Connected Vehicles to Reduce Cell Congestion in Existing Mobile Networks – DENSO, KDDI, Toyota 

Conducted by DENSO, KDDI Corporation, and Toyota Motor Corporation, this AECC proof-of-concept demonstration simulated how to address network congestion for connected vehicles, using an HD mapping application within an urban LTE environment. Using existing network resources, AECC’s low-cost, distributed edge computing approach, known as opportunistic data transfer, or ODT, the PoC demonstrates how to prioritize data needed for connected vehicle services. 

“Global deployments of connected vehicles can climb to hundreds of millions, and eventually billions, of users. Resolving network congestion simply by adding bandwidth is too expensive and impractical to scale,” said Roger Berg, AECC Communications Vice Chair and Vice President at DENSO’s North American R&D Group. “Using AECC’s ODT framework, this PoC showed that no matter where vehicles travel, critical data and services are prioritized to ensure the safety and functionality of vehicles and global fleets. By optimizing the high volume of HD mapping data during peak and non-peak hours using existing network resources, the PoC demonstrates how to avoid network congestion caused by the growing spectrum of data-intensive mobile services.” 

 AECC PoC #3: Enabling Distributed Edges for HD Mapping – Oracle Japan 

Creating and distributing an HD map in hundreds of millions of connected vehicles is a massive data challenge. To understand how to make HD map data accessible and affordable to a growing ecosystem of connected vehicle services, the AECC PoC conducted by Oracle Japan used AECC’s data offloading approach at distributed edge computing locations as well as AECC’s edge server selection approach to ensure that HD map data was distributed as the vehicle is moving, and that processing occurs at the server where the data resides. 

The results verified that AECC’s approach to data integration offers a more affordable solution by enabling interoperability with multiple clouds, and up to a 10 times reduction in query latency using a subquery component. The PoC also determined the optimal driving route for each vehicle, considering factors such as road width and traffic congestion, with an average processing time of fewer than 200 milliseconds. 

About the AECC PoC Program 

The AECC PoC Program is dedicated to addressing the data transfer requirements of the growing connected vehicle services ecosystem. Any organization can apply to start working with the AECC on a PoC by reaching out to [email protected]. The AECC PoC Hub showcases a range of AECC technology demonstrations, executed and utilized in real-world environments, that show how to meet the expanding data management needs of connected vehicle services. 

About the AECC 

The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC) is an association of cross-industry, global leaders working to explore the rapidly evolving and significant data and communications needs involved in instrumenting billions of vehicles worldwide. The AECC’s goal is to find more efficient ways to develop distributed computing and infrastructure network architectures to support the high-volume data needed for intelligent vehicle services. The AECC’s members are key players in the automotive, high-speed mobile network, distributed edge computing, wireless technology, and artificial intelligence markets. To participate in an AECC PoC proposal, please reach out to [email protected]. For more information about the AECC and its membership benefits, please visit https://aecc.org/. 

Contacts 

Press: Alexa Stewart, AECC Public Relations, (781) 876-6242, [email protected]  

Jessie Hennion, AECC Public Relations, (781) 876-6280, [email protected]