CONTINENTAL AUTOMOTIVE ROMANIA – When 5G Enhances RoadTraffic Safety in Cities

Providing the Same Level of Safety to Pedestrians and Cyclists as Modern Vehicles with Driver Assistance Systems is the ambitious goal of Continental Automotive, Orange Business, Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, and its municipality. This innovative project, called “Smart Intersection,” integrates an intelligent traffic system into road infrastructures, such as traffic lights, to reduce the number of accidents. This project is made possible through a video processing application assisted by Artificial Intelligence, a 5G connection, and an Edge Computing solution.

What is Smart Intersection?

In a densely populated city where pedestrians, bicycles, and cars coexist, the risk of road accidents is significant. This is the challenge of “Smart Intersection”: to reduce the number of accidents, with or without casualties, through the use of intelligent traffic systems. Continental Automotive aims for “Vision Zero”: zero deaths, zero injuries, zero accidents.

How does it work?

The “Smart Intersection” solution consists of a system of hardware and software that allows autonomous and connected vehicles to coordinate their driving mode when crossing smart intersections to avoid collisions. In practice, the intersections in the city of Iasi have been equipped with this smart infrastructure. It can detect road users, regardless of their type (pedestrians, cars, bicycles, etc.), and send a signal to drivers when a risk is detected. This coordination is made possible through communication between vehicles and the smart infrastructure connected via 5G.

How is Orange 5G Lab involved?

As a flagship project for the coming years, Orange 5G Lab in Iasi has naturally participated in this collaboration. To bring the “Smart Intersection” solution to life, the various partners have accessed a high-performance technical infrastructure made possible by the acquisition of a new data center based on cutting-edge technologies and 5G connectivity.

A Use Case Tested in Real Conditions

To evaluate the relevance and responsiveness of their intelligent solution, Orange 5G Lab in Iasi, Continental Automotive Romania, and their partners installed high-resolution surveillance cameras at two traffic lights located at the Podu Ros intersection in Iasi. These cameras were used for both detecting road users and creating a dynamic digital model of the intersection to analyze and understand how intersections can impact traffic safety.

Connected to the Orange 5G network, these cameras were able to transfer their video stream almost instantly to an edge computing node in the Orange 5G Lab data center in Iasi. The data could thus be quickly analyzed, and the resulting decisions/information transmitted to the Smart Intersection and the relevant road users. Thanks to the very low latency of 5G, this entire process was achieved in near real-time.

Plusieurs applications peuvent être développées sur la base de ce modèle : l’identification de potentiels incidents de trafic, l’identification de dangers pour les piétons ou les cyclistes. Toutefois, en matière de sécurité du trafic, ce cas d’usage ne représente qu’une petite partie des applications industrielles et commerciales qui peuvent être développées avec l’aide de la 5G.

Răzvan Mihai, expert Architecture et services Iot, Orange Roumanie

hanks to 5G, Connectivity Can Effectively Enhance Road Safety

The 5G provided by Orange 5G Lab in Iasi has contributed to the improvement of the “Smart Intersection” solution through three specific characteristics of the 5G mobile network:

1. Very High Speed: Capable of transferring large volumes of data, allowing for highly accurate estimation of the position of individuals using 5G location services.
2. Ultra-Low Latency: Enabling data transfer in near real-time.
3. Ultra-High Reliability: Ensuring uninterrupted communication between vehicles and the Smart Intersection infrastructure.

In 2021, Romania recorded 26,800 accidents and over 35,000 injuries. According to studies and forecasts by independent organizations, the number of injuries could have been reduced by 1,000 if intelligent traffic systems, utilizing modern technologies like those implemented in Iasi by Orange 5G Lab, Continental Automotive Romania, and their partners, had been used.