Ericsson has announced the launch of Ericsson Routes in beta. Until April, customers in California, San Francisco, will be able to sign up to the beta for free which gives access to the Basic Service. Following the beta, there will be a Premium Service which ‘addresses critical connectivity requirements along the trip’ with finer detail.
With Ericsson Routes, autonomous vehicles can get optimised routes for quicker travel times. Ericsson said that it’s working with wireless service providers to ensure that vehicles can download real-time data and make any adjustments to their route if needed. As mentioned above, the Basic Service beta is open now and autonomous vehicle operators can register their interest. In April, Ericsson is planning to open up commercial limited availability with the Premium Service landing in the second half of 2022.
Commenting on Ericsson Routes, Åsa Tamsons, Head of Business Area Technologies and New Businesses at Ericsson, said:
“Autonomous vehicles have the potential to drastically optimize traffic and reduce the number of incidents. With Ericsson Routes, developers of self-driving vehicles and related applications can leverage specific connectivity capabilities to create new solutions for the future of transportation together with Ericsson.”
Overall, Ericsson hopes that this product will help autonomous vehicles navigate more efficiently in low-connectivity areas. As things stand, autonomous vehicles have to rely on data from past trips or crowd-sourced data sets to navigate in these areas but of course, these data don’t tell the vehicle if there have been any untypical incidents such as a crash.
Following the beta, Ericsson said the product will be available in Houston, Texas, and the Premium Service will cover Las Vegas, Nevada.
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