Real-Time Knowledge for Cooperative Cognitive Automobiles

We are currently witnessing a rapid growth in the number of sensors in our automobiles. Accompanied by a trend towards higher data rate, storage capabilities, and processing power per sensor it seems safe to state that the role of information acquisition and processing is of increasing importance to the automotive domain. While radar, lidar, and video sensors were only introduced to selected upper class automobiles around the turn of the millennium, such sensors are readily available for medium sized vehicles by now and are expected to become standard in any vehicle in the not so far future. Combined with vehicular communication systems it is expected that this trend will not only show quantitative effects on driving comfort, but in the long term will provide a totally new quality of traffic operation including concerted navigation for safe, comfortable, and efficient driving.