How Self-Driving Cars Could Become a Reality

[bright music]

[Narrator] The average American spends 52.2 minutes

driving to and from work every day.

Think about that for a moment.

That means we are trapped behind the wheel

for 261 minutes a week.

For the average worker, that totaled up to 320 days

of lifetime commuting,

nearly a solid year of our lives wasted in the car.

Now, imagine an alternate future.

One where we don't have to

build our lives around our commute.

Traffic is always reasonable, car crashes plummet,

vehicles are more fuel efficient,

travel is accessible to all, even those who are

visually impaired or physically unable.

And think of those 323 days which can be spent reading,

juggling, or even learning origami.

For decades, automotive and technology companies

have been working to make self-driving cars a reality.

In fact, most of the technology needed

to put self-driving cars on the road exist today.

But a critical component is still needed.

Connectivity is vital for self-driving cars

to operate optimally.

We already have self-driving cars

that use a variety of sensors like cameras, radar,

lidar, and sonar to see their environment.

So if a child chases a ball into the street,

the car can use its sensors and react accordingly.

Self-driving cars can weave in and out of traffic,

pass left lane lollygaggers and park themselves

in precarious places.

But onboard sensors can't see everything.

For a better understanding of their environment,

self-driving cars need to be able to anticipate

upcoming changes in traffic, weather,

and a host of other variables,

not just react to what is immediately in front of them.

A self-driving car needs to talk to cars on the road,

while it exchanges data with a huge number

of other elements in its environment,

like traffic lights, emergency response vehicles,

weather satellites, pedestrians, buildings,

the possibilities are nearly endless.

The more data the vehicle can access,

the better it can learn to operate safely and efficiently,

but self-driving cars don't need to just receive data,

they have to aggregate, interpret,

and distribute it almost instantly.

This requires speed and data volume

of an advanced network, and just such a network is coming.

Later this year, AT&T will introduce

its mobile 5G network of the future,

which will provide an opportunity for a step function change

in mobile speed and capacity.

This could greatly improve the throughput

and latency of data for self-driving cars,

and further support self-driving cars

in making new realtime decisions.

AT&T is the first founding partner

of the American Center for Mobility,

a non-profit testing and product design facility

that studies interoperability,

or the science of how to facilitate communication

between all the disparate elements needed

to safely operate a self-driving environment.

AT&T is working with several automotive manufacturers,

as well as data scientists and product developers.

To use technology, to help unlock a safer,

self-driving future.

Soon, all the time and mental energy

previously wasted on our commute

can be spent relaxing, or preparing for the workday,

or video chatting with those who are the reason

we work so hard in the first place.

A self-driving ecosystem supported by AT&T

could not only make us safer,

it can help conserve our most precious resource, time.