Honda is looking to nature to improve the safety of driving, using bio-mimicry of the behavior of a school of fish to inform a new technical concept it\u2019s unveiling at CES called Safe Swarm. Safe Swarm uses vehicle-to-vehicle communication based on the dedicated short range communication standard to provide assistance to a human driver.
Safe Swarm essentially means that cues picked up by one vehicle equipped with connective communication tech can pass along information to others in proximity, far before a driver would be aware of anything. Cars can shuttle their collected knowledge down the line, propagating info about a pile-up potentially miles ahead in near real-time to help make it easier for human drivers to take action to avoid problems before they happen.
Other car companies are working on similar tech; Mobileye\u2019s REM system works on a very similar basis, connecting vehicles equipped with Mobileye sensor tech so that they can share real-time traffic and road condition info to inform ADAS and other autonomous driving features. It\u2019s a bit like a fully-automated Waze that doesn\u2019t require driver input.
This is another example of tech that\u2019s not imminently bound for production, but it\u2019s a concept that shows how growing connectivity between cars, including what looks like it could be an industry-wide requirement for vehicle-to-vehicle capabilities according to a recent Department of Transportation recommendation. Autonomous cars would benefit greatly from something like Safe Swarm, of course, but it also has the potential to save a lot of lines before we reach true self-driving at the consumer level.<\/p>\n