Massive data stream for cars of the future

The cars of the future will drive themselves by receiving and interpreting as much as one gigabyte of data every second, says author and self-styled 'big data strategist', Mark van Rijmenam.

In a blog he posted last month, van Rijmenam cited Google's self-driving car (pictured) as an example of that process already at work.

"The self-driving car from Google already is a true data creator," he wrote at the time.

"With all the sensors to enable the car to drive without a driver, it generates nearly one gigabyte every second. It uses all that data to know where to drive and how fast to drive.

"It can even detect a new cigarette butt thrown on the ground and it then knows that a person might appear all of a sudden from behind a corner or car.

"One gigabyte per second, imagine the amount of data that will create every year: On average, Americans drive 600 hours per year in their car. That equals 2,160,000 seconds or approximately two petabytes of data per car per year.

"With the amount of cars worldwide to surpass one billion, it is almost unimaginable how much data will be created when Google’s self-driving car will become common on the streets."

The estimation that Americans drive as much as 600 hours a year equates to 1.64 hours of driving every day of the week, including the weekend. But even if the average is actually just a fraction of that number, it represents a phenomenal amount of data collected and/or transmitted by the self-driving cars on our roads – from as early as 2020 perhaps.

While van Rijmenam's conception of a future in which autonomous cars outnumber conventional vehicles may be some way off yet, in Australia the establishment of supporting infrastructure for autonomous motoring is already advancing steadily.

According to van Rijmenam, the autonomous car of the future will process data from satellites and road network infrastructure, including the prevailing traffic situation, weather conditions and even back-to-base vehicle telemetry for operational monitoring. Clearly a proponent for 'hyperconnectivity', van Rijmenam anticipates sensors in cars will track movements for police when the vehicle is stolen.

Based on the blog, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich told a developer's forum in San Francisco earlier this week that autonomous cars will process data at a rate roughly equivalent to 2666 Internet users.

"The average person today generates about 6-to-700 megabits a day. By 2020, the estimate is 1.5 gigabytes a day for the average person," Mashable.com reported Krzanich as saying.

"We're talking like 3000 people per car in data."