Al Ain: The UAE might soon have the world’s first communicating driverless cars if a trial of a new intelligent transportation system succeeds.

The UAE University’s Roadway, Transportation, and Traffic Safety Research Centre (RTTSRC) is working on a new intelligent transportation system to enable driverless cars to communicate on the roads.

A team at RTTSRC, led by professor Yaser E. Hawas, which has been working on the project for six years has now collaborating with Tata Consulting Group (TCG), a subsidiary of major Indian auto firm Tata Motors.

According to Prof Hawas, who is the director of the RTTSRC, the project explores inter-vehicular communication system, which is based on an algorithm that enables vehicles to use real-time route guidance in urban traffic networks.

Prof Hawas said the first-of-its-kind in the world is now ready for its first deployment test.

“The wow factor is we are now collaborating with Tata and we are going to have a deployment test in Al Ain. We are going to equip six vehicles to do the field testing — each vehicle is going to send information to the other vehicles — and we are then going to see how this information is going to be propagated.”

The algorithm enables communication between a ‘searcher’ vehicle and a ‘candidate’ vehicle whose origin matches the destination of the searcher vehicle, and travelling in the opposite direction.

This information can then be used to calculate in the simplest way, the shortest path for each vehicle from its current position to the destination.

“Currently, the fully autonomous vehicles move in the network assuming that they know where to go. But the one that we are testing enables the vehicles to change their routes and get better ones to reach the destination using the information that they receive from other vehicles,” said Prof Hawas.

He added that “apart from simulation tests we do here in the centre, we are also going to take it to a deployment stage here in Al Ain”.

The team is developing the hardware and software solutions of all devices that will enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication between the six cars, including GPS and communication capabilities that will enable the vehicles to locate each other and redirect vehicles automatically in real time to reach their aimed destinations in the network. Following the deployment test, Prof Hawas says the university will prepare technical papers detailing the results of the test.