Autonomous Vehicles

Challenge

Increasingly today, the data generated, collected and maintained by autonomous vehicles is shared over the internet with other vehicles, traffic infrastructure and private and public entities. This kind of data include identifying information about the owner or passenger of the vehicle (e.g., language preferences, favourite GPS destinations, infotainment screen layout, or payment card information, destination information, route information, speed, and time travelled) for a variety of purposes, such as to navigate around a place, to authenticate authorised use, or to customize comfort, safety, and entertainment settings. Through this information the autonomous vehicle is able to identify owners and passengers and their activities with a high degree of certainty. Connected cars generate up to 25 GBs of data every hour76, most of which is data about individuals, such as the driver of the vehicle or its passengers. Not only they gather information on car systems and driving behaviour, but may also process health, location and communication (metadata and content) data as well infotainment systems data. Many of these data are linked either directly or indirectly to an individual and are thus personal data in accordance with European Union data protection legislation.

TANGO solutions

TANGO can be used in the context of autonomous driving to enable secure and privacy preserving V2x data sharing among vehicles, between vehicles and drivers or external actors (e.g., insurance companies, mechanical service providers, car manufacturers, etc.). Energy efficient Blockchain based mechanisms will allow selective sharing and transfer of vehicle- and driver- related data such as payment card information, infotainment screen layout, preferred language, favourite destinations, desired temperature, seat and wheel position, driving preferences. Moreover, using TANGO’s secure and trustworthy data sharing mechanisms, autonomous vehicles will be able to safely communicate in an ad hoc manner and exchange information in real time towards preventing car accidents and improving drivers’ experience.