Motorola’s WiMAX for Vehicle to Infrastructure Connectivity

Motorola is the new entrant in the field of intelligent vehicle communication field and it has a new take on the technology to be used for communication. While most of the current research, both federal and industry/academia is on DSRC (IEEE 802.11p), Motorola wants to use Mobile WiMAX technology instead.

According to dailywireless.org,  the  IEEE 802.16e based X24 module is a proof-of-concept device developed keeping automotive telemetry in mind. The idea is to bring in-car broadband applications through this WTM1000 chipset. By having a small form factor and lower power consumption, Motorola is aiming to reach a wide range of users for its chipset. Motorola is also planning to license the chipset and colloborating with partners like Sprint.

Though WiMAX seems like a probably option for vehicle to infrastructure communication keeping its high range and support for mobility in mind, its not a viable solution for vehicle to vehicle communications where latency is a crucial factor. Future devices in vehicles would have multiple interfaces (e.g: WiMAX for V2I and DSRC for V2V) to take best of all the worlds.

DSRC on mobile devices!

Japanese company, Oki Electric Co. Ltd has brought DSRC to mobile phone like devices!  According to TechOn Oki is planning to exhibit this prototype device during Wireless Japan 2008. The basic application in consideration is communication between pedestrians carrying these devices and vehicles equipped with DSRC.  This application issues alerts whenever pedestrians and vehicles are too close to each other (pto avoid unforeseen accidents).

Oki’s main aim for this device is for pedestrian safety and hence integration of DSRC with mobile phones which has 80% penetration. In addition to DSRC, this device also has GPS and 3G. This phone basically exchanges location information periodically with DSRC device in its surrounding area.  Based on signal strength and gps location it vibrates and alerts the users of any potential vehicle collisions. This seems to be really useful, though I would suspect it would become annoying if a person knows about the vehicles in his vicinity but the device still alerts him. Probably more intelligence would be added to the device later on, if it caches up.

On the other hand, if the architecture is open to s/w developers and researchers then this would be an ideal device to play around with (providing its not expensive). Current vehicular network testbeds depend on bulky small-form factor computers to act as wireless clients, communicating with each other or with road side infrastructure. But, an  ultra-small device like this would induce large scale deployments and experiments on vanets.

The Coming of the Car Bot (BW)

This is an interesting Business Week article that I came across today. It talks about driver-less cars, latest intelligent technologies that are already being used in vehicles, people’s expectations etc.

Click this link for the article:The Coming of the Car Bot

Intelligent Traffic Controller

Folks from the CVIS project showcased a prototype of intelligent traffic controller at the recently held InterState exhibition at Amsterdam. The basic idea is for the vehicles to exchange information about traffic with the traffic controller (vehicle to road side communication). There is not a whole lot of information in this article but it looks like they fitted a sort of webcam infront of the car and a display at the back (I’m not sure why) and then stream this video over wireless (802.11p) to the traffic controller.

For people who are further interested, they carried out a survey in 12 european countries about what kind of automotive technologies do people need and what services are they willing to pay for. For more details, please refer to the survey.

PPT on Data Dissemination in Vehicular Networks

I recently gave my MAE (aka Ph.D Qualifiers) on the topic of “Data Dissemination in Vehicular Networks”. I am attaching the slides for the same, for people who are interested in this field.

Data Dissemination in Vehicular Networks

Disclaimer:

Most of the pics used in the presentation were just lifted from google or elsewhere. I don’t hold their copyrights

Mazda starts trials for vehicle-to-roadside communication

Mazda is going to test its new Advanced Safety Vehicle(ASV-4: See Pic) on the roads of Hiroshima as part of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) initiative. This is aimed at reducing traffic accidents, congestion and speeding. The idea is to equip the road with sensors so that vehicles can communicate with them to get information which they cannot get otherwise (eg: over arched bridges, blind corners etc.).

This system is different from GM’s V2V technologies because it employs road-side to vehicle communication in addition to the vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The current testing is Phase 4 of the project whereas the previous phases have already resulted in successful deployment of such safety technologies as PreCrash safety system and rear-end collision warning. Mazda is collaborating with Mitsubishi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries on this project as part of Hiroshima’s initiative to network people, vehicls and road-sensors.

Virtual traffic control sub-centers with talking cars

If Com2React’s proposal gets adopted by automotive industry, cars no longer have to depend completely on the regional traffic controllers. Instead, cars can talk with each other with the help of special software and elect one of the vehicles in the neighborhood as a virtual traffic control sub-center. The advantage lies in the fact that vehicles know ‘live’ information more accurately and with less delay than the actual traffic controllers. The sub-center gathers and processes the information obtained by the vehicles (equipped with sensors) and disseminate the required information. According to the C2R’s researchers the challenge lies in intelligently distributing the required data among the vehicles without heavy overload.

Currently the researchers, funded by the EU, developed a system that can help inform drivers about poor weather conditions, congestion on the roads etc so that they can take alternate routes. The system is designed to be integrated with the navigation system of the vehicle to provide real-time traffic information. According to ICTResults, a prototype version of this project has been showcased in Paris and Munich and it works!! The C2R team is currently trying to bring down the cost of the system from 1000’s euros to 100 euros. If we can get all of this, for just 100 bucks, then that would be a sweet deal!

Wi-Fi on Rail!!!

Come Jan. 30th, if you are traveling from Boston to Massachusetts esp. along the Worcester-Framingham-Boston line, don’t be surprised if you can access wireless Internet! In what is being touted as the nation’s first ever Wi-Fi access on a commuter rail, this pilot program is going to change the way public transit would be viewed in the future. According to MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) this is going to be started as a test-phase, meaning people can expect certain technical glitches in the beginning. But, I am sure the commuters would be more than happy to beta-test this new service with fervor.

Technically, the coaches would be equipped with wireless antenna that can catch Sprint wireless signals and then they are fed to a wireless router (Parvus Ridernet Access Points) via a wire (See the Figure). Passengers can then connect to this Wi-Fi hotspot from their wireless devices and bingo!! Internet access, right on the move. While this technology is a bit different from how the Intelligent Transportation Services (ITS) esp. Vehicular Networks are envisioned, nonetheless the end goal is pretty much same…enhancing the user’s automotive experience.

There’s been a lot written about Wi-Fi access to cars on the roads but very less on the issues involved with trains. It would be really interesting to see how this system holds up, QoS wise, as more and more passengers start using the network. Though currently the MBTA urges people to use the service for low bandwidth applications like browsing, its imperative that they support video-audio streaming in future if they have to get back their $262,000 spent on the project from increased ticket revenues .

NEC releases SDK for car2car communication

NEC released communication SDK (C2X) for both car to car and car to road side communication. It offers API for software developers to write applications for road safety, communication etc. According to the ITPro website, NEC showcased a prototype wherein a car was able to communicate with sensors installed on the bend of a road. The technology used for communication is 802.15.4 for car to roadside and 802.11p for car to car. Though the NEC SDK website doesn’t provide any specific details, they seem to have enhanced routing algorithms and anonymous data transmission!

The C2X protocol stack can be run on x86 based hardware platforms and some embedded systems that run linux operating system. The APIs that they would be allowing the developers to use provide access to this stack to send/receive messages and define message formats. I am not yet able to access the SDK, to see what exactly it is all about. Looks like I need to register on the website (which I did) and then would hopefully be able to login (I still didnt get a reply giving my account credentials) to access it. I am actually curious to get my hands on this SDK and see what I can tinker with.

Driverless Cars by 2015 — GM

“This is not science fiction” said Larry Burns (VP of GM’s R&D) in a recent interview when asked about GM’s intention of developing driver less cars by 2015. In the recently concluded CES, Rick Wagoner (CEO of GM) gave an insight into the vehicular technology (v2v) research happening at GM and what they are hoping for in near future. Interestingly, he said the main obstacles of the technology is not technical but rather human perception of it. I guess he was talking about the natural reluctance that we have allowing a car to take control of itself and issues of privacy etc. Anyway, the idea of cramming sensors into a car and having antenna to communicate with other vehicles has been envisioned quite a while back. But, its actually good to see that GM is taking this technology seriously and hoping to be the front runner when driver less vehicles can be mass produced.

A Driver less vehicle can essentially navigate itself, alert the drivers regarding possible collisions and blind spots and may eventually even align with other vehicles (more like the cars of a train) on a freeway to maximally utilize the space. The automaker plans to test drive these vehicles by 2015 and get them on the road by 2018. So within a decade, we can just get into the car, sit back and relax and let the car do the driving. One less thing to worry about! Considering that the GM sponsored Carnegie Mellon’s self-driving Chevrolet Tahoe “Boss” won the DARPA Urban challenge, we can be sure that they are serious about this. (The picture on the left is the “Boss” that won the contest!!!).