Today, autonomous driving is science, not science fiction. SnT is actively involved in developing this technology using many sensors and computing devices. Researchers are working to improve communication between autonomous cars when they are driving or manoeuvering.
Autonomous vehicles currently use communication protocols to collaborate. This is essential for carrying out manoeuvres such as meeting at crossroads, for example.
A team from the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary research centre has teamed up with peers from the Universität Lausanne to work on a communication protocol capable of handling how a group of vehicles – the number of which is constantly changing given the traffic situation – could securely and safely decide how to manoeuvre.
The team has ensured that vehicles can still communicate securely, even in case of a cyberattack. An example here would be malicious entities attempting to hijack the identities of several vehicles to gain control and decide on risky manoeuvres. “Human lives are at stake” stresses Júlio Mendonça, Research Associate at SnT.
Switching itineraries to deal with unsuitable protocols
Until now, Byzantine fault-tolerant protocols were built to function with a pre-defined fixed number of communicating participants. This made them unsuitable for vehicular communication on public roads, where the number of vehicles capable of interacting with each other varies considerably depending on the time and place.
The breakthrough proposed by the Swiss-Luxembourg research project removes a barrier to autonomous driving while offering safety guarantees to the drivers of tomorrow. Their work was published in 2024 as part of the Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Spring).
‟ The protocol can increase security, safety, and driving efficiency of collaborative driving applications”
Research Associate
“This represents a major step forward in enabling secure and safe collaboration among vehicles. The protocol can increase security, safety, and driving efficiency of collaborative driving applications, for example, by enabling safe decisions for a group of vehicles to cross an intersection or merge into a highway” explains Mendonça.
Now seeking industrial partners, the researchers are looking forward to implementing the results of their work in real applications and helping to create a safer environment for future connected and autonomous vehicles.
But that’s not all: the scope of this research can be extended to other autonomous systems such as drones and robots for collaborative manoeuvres.
This opens numerous possibilities for SnT researchers to implement their work.
About CritiX
Júlio Mendonca is a Research Associate in the Critical and Extreme Security and Dependability Research Group. CritiX conducts research in creating robustness and resilience for the large-scale infrastructures and real-time embedded systems, enabling them to withstand attacks and accidental faults, survive and operate without disruptions.