Volvo developing intelligent media streaming for cars

Swedish automobile giant Volvo on Tuesday said it is developing intelligent high bandwidth streaming capabilities in collaboration with Ericsson which can create the possibility of a highway full of autonomous cars.

"Imagine a highway full of autonomous cars with their occupants sitting back watching their favourite TV shows in high definition. This new way of commuting will demand new technology, and a much broader bandwidth to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience," said Anders Tylman, GM, Volvo Monitoring & Concept Center at Volvo Car Group in a statement.

Volvo aims to deliver high quality interruption-free experience in its cars using Ericsson's cloud expertise and network.

"We recently unveiled our design vision for autonomous cars with Concept 26. We are working on future solutions to deliver the best user experience in autonomous mode," the statement said.

Under the new intelligent streaming system, content will be tailored to the duration of a trip by predicting the route and looking ahead at network conditions to deliver a high quality uninterrupted viewing experience.

Ericsson's Automotive Services head Claes Herlitz said: "Our research shows that almost 70 percent of all mobile data traffic will be from video in the coming years."

"This requires an innovative connectivity, cloud and analytics solution that is not only capable of serving multiple moving vehicles across a highway, but also has the capacity to provide the high quality, uninterrupted video service." Herlitz added.

Future Volvo cars will provide a one-click navigation with customised media list by learning the most common routes and travel times to enable a customer to choose a route and select content tailored to the amount of autonomous time available during that commute, the statement said.

"If you want to watch the latest episode of your favourite series, the car will know how long the journey needs to take and can optimise the route and driving control accordingly. With autonomous drive it is no longer just a question of just getting from A to B quickly - it's about the experience you wish to have in the car - how you wish to spend the time you are saving," the statement added.