5G Hub takes its race car to the streets

5G Hub takes its race car to the streets

In a groundbreaking experiment, the 5G Hub took its Race Car to the streets.

Our remote-controlled car, operated remotely from a Playseat cockpit in the 5G Hub, was driven around The Strip (the beating heart of the High Tech Campus). What makes this particularly special is that this demo is controlled directly over Vodafone’s mobile 5G network without a line-of-sight. This can only be achieved when you have “eyes” on the road and a speedy and accurate response when correcting the steering.    

Processing a video signal will usually result in relatively high latency. However, a delay can cause collisions with other vehicles, pedestrians, or objects. For such an application to run optimal and securely, low end-to-end latency is critical: a remote-controlled car requires low latency for the network and the video encoding/decoding.   

The ultra-Low latency video streaming from the camera to the display can only be achieved with a blend of high-speed encoding and decoding of video in combination with an ultra-reliable low latency mobile connection. That is where we combine 5G’s main features, such as ultra-low latency and prioritization, with fast video streaming by using the Soliton System‘s Zao-SH solution with advanced encoding technology.  

The car’s video signal and steering control signals are transported over the existing mobile 5G cellular network and bypass the public Internet. This connection can prioritize the mobile signal to achieve a guaranteed percentage of the available bandwidth. In this case, the car can be driven and controlled anywhere in the Netherlands with a total glass-to-glass latency of around 50ms.  

The technology employed in the demo is a solution that can be used in a (real-life) race car, but also in other vehicles, like family cars or even drones, for as much as you increase the weight or size of the vehicle, the latency remains the same. This opens a roll of possibilities for remote-driven transportation.