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General Motors and Cisco are collaborating on “modernizing” car testing. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) will be utilised by the business.

At the GM Milford Proving Ground, Cisco’s Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul network architecture will be used by GM in real-time for pre-production performance testing.

The wireless backhaul provides vehicle-to-trackside connectivity and allows GM test engineers to multiple monitoring of several hundred data channels during the test run.

GM observes vehicle operation parameters for helping GM to observe and modify the test as it is being conducted and hence the results can be optimised by reducing test time and the time to vehicle market can be accelerated.

“GM is the first auto manufacturer to deploy Cisco’s wireless backhaul technology.”

According to Cisco, engineers previously did not have real-time access to development data during vehicle performance testing because of the fast speeds of automobiles. Engineers repeated experiments while data was collected locally and processed remotely.

The IIoT networking portfolio of Cisco includes Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul, which aims to combine the flexibility of wireless communications with the speed and dependability of fibre connectivity.

With handoffs and private mobile connectivity for mission-critical applications, the network provides up to 500 Mbps with extremely low latency and high bandwidth wireless.

As per Michael Shannon, VP of engineering, CISCO IOT

GM needed “a mature solution to gain real-time visibility into vehicle test data, and they tested many technologies which all fell short,”

With Cisco’s wireless backhaul, GM was “able to achieve the visibility needed to shorten engineering cycles — ultimately helping to greatly improve time to market for technical innovations,” Shannon said.

“As GM accelerates the shift to electric vehicles, every minute counts,” said Anthony Bolton, CIO and CTO, global telecommunication and end use services, infrastructure and development, GM. 

“Using the network and its data to accelerate our performance testing is the type of innovation that delivers real business value as we transition from automaker to platform innovator.”

Source: Datamation