BroadBit project events and news

GeoNet concluded its activity with its Final Workshop that took place 29 January 2010 in INRIA’s premises in Paris, France. IPv6 GeoNetworking was presented together with its link with the related ITS development in CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium, CVIS implementation and ETSI TC ITS standardization.

Moreover the functionalities of IPv6 GeoNetworking was shown in a real system including 3 cars, 2 road-side units and a control center. A (very simple) enhanced driver awareness application was demonstrated and numerous attendees could enjoy a ride to see the achievement.

The FP7-funded European project GeoNet designed, implemented, tested and pushed for standardization an IPv6 GeoNetworking architecture related to many other major initiatives like CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium and CVIS.

Download presentations:

• Thierry Ernst, Andras Kovacs, Wenhui Zhang: GeoNet Architecture and Specification
• Emilio Dávila González: About cooperative systems in Europe
• Wenhui Zhang: GeoNet Implementation and testing
• Thierry Ernst: Why IPv6 GeoNetworking is needed for ITS?
• GeoNet IPv6 GeoNetworking live demonstration
• Carlos J. Bernardos: GeoNet system design
• Arnaud de La Fortelle: Talking cars
• Hamid Menouar: GeoNet Use and dissemination

BroadBit releases and offers new, industry level automotive black-box (OBU: On Board Unit) for recording driving statistics and event details!

The Automotive Black Box has following hardware features:

• GPS sensor, sampling position at every second. Logged GPS data includes time information, vehicle position, vehicle speed, and GPS signal quality data (HDOP and number of satellites)
• 3-axis accelerometer, sampling acceleration 50 times per second
• Ignition input, which synchronizes unit power to ignition status so that start-up is automated and battery is not drained during days/weeks of standstill
• Rugged metallic casing and automotive input connectors
• Bluetooth radio for communicating logged data
• Internal flash memory, data processing, and statistics generation

Log reporting process may be started manually or automatically in the proximity of a reporting terminal. Provided Java based reporting applications can run on PCs, laptops, smart-phones, or PDAs. In the context of electronic tolling, this allows to set up auto-reporting terminals at:

• Freight forwarder home bases
• Petrol stations
• Border crossings

Complementing server application visualizes reported log data:

• Intuitive user interface allows querying events of interest or road utilization statistics
• Enforcement data can be visualized on a map segment
• Longitudinal and Lateral acceleration are graphically charted

Demo interface: broadbit.com

There is an ongoing contest of ideas for reducing urban traffic congestions, called ‘ITS Congestion Challenge‘. The submission is open for all, and judging ideas is through community method, so this may give a sense of what solution is favored by the general public. The idea entry is open till end of July, and ranking will be done during August. The best ranked idea will emerge in September, the winner will be announced at the Stockholm ITS World Congress.

Proposed solutions can be viewed and voted through following link, after registering:
http://www.vencorps.com

Traffic flows are greatly enhanced when unnecessary lane changes are eliminated and the hard shoulder is safely taken into use during peak hours. This results in better use of existing infrastructure. Analogy: smooth and turbulent flow of air.

BroadBit a submitted a proposal to this challenge called ‘Laminar traffic flows and dynamic hard shoulder utilization’, which promotes better use of existing urban roads through intelligent sensor infrastructure. Vote it if you like it.

Executive summary:

As first step, let’s consider what happens on urban roads before congestion arises:

1. Different lanes develop different speeds. Some cars switch lanes as they hunt for fastest lane, hindering everyone else during the merging.
2. Some cars switch more than one lane as they head to a highway exit from an inner lane, causing more hold-up than a foresighted driver.
3. At some critical point the free-flow pauses, and later restarts. On hard-shouldered highways the outermost emergency lane is left unused during all these congestions because of safety regulations – except for occasional rogue drivers zipping by. There surely must be a way to make better use of this under-utilized road surface – and without incurring any safety risks.

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On June, 24 and 25 2008, Partners from 24 European organizations gave the “kick-off “ to TeleFOT, a Large Scale Collaborative Project under the Seventh Framework Programme, co-funded with 9,7 million Euro by the European Commission DG Information Society and Media within the strategic objective “ICT for Cooperative Systems”.

Officially started on June 1st 2008, TeleFOT acts in response to a need recognised by the European Commission, namely to test the impacts of driver support functions on the driving task with large fleets of test drivers in real-life driving conditions. In particular, TeleFOT intends to assess the impacts of functions provided by aftermarket and nomadic devices, including future interactive traffic services that will become part of driving environment systems within the next five years.

BroadBit is involved in TeleFOT as responsible of supplying test vehicles with driver activity logging technology.

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