Parallel Vision for Intelligent Transportation Systems in Metaverse: Challenges, Solutions, and Potential Applications

Metaverse and intelligent transportation system (ITS) are disruptive technologies that have the potential to transform the current transportation system by decreasing traffic accidents and improving driving safety. The integration of Metaverse and transportation technology, called metaverse transportation system (MTS), can greatly improve the intelligence of real transportation system. The digital models built in MTS help to simulate the full life cycle of physical entities, which equip the virtual space with controllability and flexibility. In this article, we concentrate on the field of environment perception, which is the basic function of intelligent vehicles in MTS. To overcome the poor scalability of traditional environment perception methods, we develop the framework of parallel vision for ITS in metaverse (PVITS), consisting of construction of virtual transportation space, model learning based on computational experiments, and feedback optimization based on parallel execution. This article highlights opportunities brought by PVITS in terms of model precision and generalization improvement. Then, the challenges of PVITS are discussed, i.e., distribution difference between virtual and real transportation space, structure design and theoretical interpretation of vision models, and data security and privacy in virtual transportation space. After that, we present several solutions to tackle the application challenges and fully exploit the superior characteristics of PVITS while attenuating their negative side effects. Some potential applications are also given to represent the effectiveness and reliability of PVITS.