Helping cars and Infrastructure Cooperate
CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems) is a major new European research and development project aiming to design, develop and test the technologies needed to allow cars to communicate with each other and with the nearby roadside infrastructure.
Based on such real-time road and traffic information, many novel applications can be produced. The consequence will be increased road safety and efficiency, and reduced environmental impact.
The project’s ambition is to begin a revolution in mobility for travellers and goods, completely re-engineering how drivers, their vehicles, the goods they carry and the transport infrastructure interact.
With CVIS, drivers will influence the traffic control system directly, and get guidance to the quickest route to their destination. Information shown on road signs will be available wirelessly and be shown on a display in the vehicle. Such displays can also warn drivers of approaching emergency vehicles, allowing emergency personnel to reach accidents faster with less danger for themselves and for cars along their path. In the same way, hazardous goods shipments can be tracked at all times and have priority along a pre-selected safe route.
Other key innovations include high-precision positioning and local dynamic maps, a secure and open application framework for access to online services and a system for gathering and integrating monitoring data from moving vehicles and from roadside detectors and sensors.
All this, however, can only happen if there is full interoperability in the communication between different makes of vehicle and between vehicles and different types of roadside systems. CVIS will therefore develop a mobile router using a wide range of communication media, including mobile cellular and wireless local area networks, short-range microwave (DSRC) or infra-red, to link vehicles continuously with roadside equipment and servers. The project will apply and validate the ISO “CALM” standards for continuous mobile communication, and will provide input to standards development in European and global standardisation bodies.
To validate the project’s results, all CVIS technologies and applications will be tested at one or more test sites in six European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands/Belgium, Sweden and the UK.
However, technology is not the only stumbling block on the road to a reality where every car, every traffic light, every road sign and every kilometre of roadway is equipped with CVIS-like technology. A number of non-technical obstacles will also have to be overcome. The CVIS project is therefore creating a toolkit to address key “deployment enablers” such as user acceptance, data privacy and security, system openness and interoperability, risk and liability, public policy needs, cost/benefit and business models, and roll-out plans for implementation.
For more information, contact cvis@mail.ertico.com
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