Social Experimental Evaluation of Road State Information System in Snow Country

Road surface weather condition is one of essential elements which realizes future practical autonomous vehicle. It is necessarily information to realize safer driving for higher level autonomous vehicle as well as driver of conventional manual vehicle on severe condition road in snow country. This paper introduces a road state information system which consists of gathering, delivering, and visualizing functions. Our method processes to determine what ahead road weather state like dry, wet, snow, ice etc. corresponds to with analyzing of multiple type of sensors output in real time. Next, deliver it via V2V or V2R wireless communication which is composed of several types of different wavelength wireless communication system with cognitive wireless link switching method. Finally, provide road state information for application level software or vehicle controlling system. We also report the social experiment for system evaluation with our prototype on actual highway which located in northern part of Honshu Island, Japan. This time evaluation contains real time onboard sensor system, V2R wireless communication, and the warning system of critical road section such icy and snowy road for driver as an application.