Chinese carmaker, SAIC, in collaboration with country’s leading telecom major, Huawei and operator, China Mobile, has successfully tested tele-operated vehicle operation, using a ultra-high speed 5G connection for OTA data transmission.

The experiment, which was conducted in an MG iGS model, beamed visual data of the vehicle’s surrounding through the radars and cameras mounted on the car, to the control centre, located remotely.

The vehicle was able to perform manoeuvres such as close tracking, coordinated lane change with another car, as well as emergency braking, all this while the video stream and driving control signal inputs being relayed in real-time, over a data band of up to 50Mbps uplink speeds and having ultra-low end-to-end latency of 10ms.

The beta-test was pursued to demonstrate the possibility of a person sitting miles away to precisely drive a car, and showcased the reliability of mobile data connectivity, which stood at 99.99 percent post the beta-test on a road car.

According to Huawei, the success of the test, with less than 1ms of air interface latency in Shanghai, is a step, inching closer to the future, where autonomous vehicles will be dependent upon such ultra-speed connectivity solutions, for taking self judgments on the roads.

With a lot of telematics solutions also utilising high-speed data connectivity to allow for functional vehicle control solutions, like geo-fencing and remote immobilisation to name  a few, the test will also aid further improvement and more utilisation of such Internet of Things (IoT) based vehicle monitoring options, especially in the commercial vehicle space.