Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1228683
24 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2020 munication would likely destroy the ability to progress and be sustainable. Such a lesson has already been learned in assembly manufactur- ing. For those familiar with the IPC-CFX (Con- nected Factory Exchange) IIoT standard, every topic, message, dataset, and content is deter- mined by the standard itself such that there is never any translation or conversion of CFX data by any form of middleware required. The exact facts related to any situation can be received and acted upon immediately. For autonomous driving to become a practi- cal reality, a CFX-type language definition is required, with carmakers working together to create an interoperable solution. Every other aspect of driving has almost always been stan- dardized—such as pedal positions, the steer- ing wheel, and road signs and markings—so this should not be a surprise. The human ele- ment of the design has always been there. The IPC-CFX standard has achieved a great deal, breaking down barriers of data exchange, eliminating the massive waste of time and money across the industry related to bespoke, customized machine interface connections, which collectively would have led to costs to the industry of many billions of dollars. With any and all machine vendors and soft- ware solution providers now, in principle, only having to develop and support one interface mous cars to simply talk to each other. This can let cars know what is around the next cor- ner and then be able to coordinate actions such that cars as a group decide what to do together, safely. There may even be input from fixed stations, such as at intersections so that there is less dependency on live traffic at crit- ical points. The dependency on having fault- less internal sensors is then avoided, as con- firmation of observations and events can be confirmed, taking data from multiple sources and immediately exposing any inconsistent or erroneous input. The technology to do this is relatively simple, especially with advances such as 5G and Wi-Fi 6 that support improved speed and latency. In addition to how data is moved around the net- work, there is also the need for a common lan- guage to be developed and adopted through which each car speaks to any other, which—of course—must be carmaker agnostic. Research and development of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication are ongoing, although the common language remains to be defined with a focus so far on describing what cars are doing rather than what they "see." Without such standardization, it is not likely that there will be enough of any one type of car on the road to provide a good service. Enhanc- ing competition through the restriction of com- Relying on only their onboard sensors, automated vehicles are limited by what they can see.