Self-driving cars on the roads may become commonplace in the future, but so far they have a number of nuances that require improvement. One of the problems in their operation is software failures caused by solar activity.
We are talking about solar storms - random eruptions of huge amounts of energy that can cause a massive surge in geomagnetic activity and radiation. These storms pose no immediate threat to a human driver, but in the case of a digital robot, they can disrupt the connection between the car's GPS navigator and the satellites that provide information about the vehicle's location for further movement.
Scott McIntosh, director of the observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, warns that unmanned vehicle systems should not rely entirely on GPS. “As soon as the sun intervenes, legions of computer-controlled computers will pull off the road and wait for the connection to be re-established,” Macintosh said.
Solar storms are rated on a five-point scale, the most powerful of which can damage international power grids, disable satellites and radio communications on the sunny side of the Earth. The US Space Weather Prediction Center alerts utilities, airlines and other industries that rely heavily on satellite data in the coming storm. As a rule, the information arrives 30-60 minutes before the charged particles reach the Earth.
The good news is that the sun is less active these days. Its energy surges follow an 11-year cycle that last peaked in April 2014. The start of the self-driving car era seems to coincide with a relatively calm solar period.
Meanwhile, automated vehicle design engineers are already taking steps to outsmart the sun. UAV navigation systems are mostly based on a field of laser-pulsed sensors known as lidar that read the immediate environment and communicate directly with the car's computer nervous system. More distant information such as distance to the border is stored in regularly updated high definition maps. This means that the vehicle does not need to use GPS to keep driving.
“At least in the event of solar exposure, the lidar data will be enough to bring the car to a standstill. Automated vehicles can work well enough even if online connectivity is difficult,”said Danny Shapiro, senior director of the automotive division at Nvidia Corp., who develops chips and artificial intelligence systems for Uber Inc.