Features

Having re-entered the ITS market, 3M is busy shaping the future technology for vehicle detection, tolling and parking, as Colin Sowman discovers. Having sold off its Opticom business in 2007, 3M effectively re-entered the ITS market last year paying $110 million for Federal Signal Technology Group (FSTech) – but why?

Being the first organisation attempting to implement an interoperable system poses challenges and increases risk that must be managed to realise the benefits. The European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) legislation aims to avoid the problems experienced in the USA and provide road users with seamless travel across the EU but it can pose big problems for some toll operators. Take, for instance, the case of the Humber Bridge in the UK. Its case was highlighted at the recent ITS World Congress by Tim Gammons,

Jason Barnes looks at Daimler’s Intelligent Drive programme to consider how machine vision has advanced the state of the art of vision-based in-vehicle systems. Traditionally, radar was the in-vehicle Driver Assistance System (DAS) technology of choice, particularly for applications such as adaptive cruise control and pre-crash warning generation. Although vision-based technology has made greater inroads more recently, it is not a case of ‘one sensor wins’. Radar and vision are complementary and redundancy

Mobileye’s Itay Gat discusses the evolution of monocular solutions for assisted and autonomous driving with Jason Barnes. Founded in 1999, Israeli company Mobileye manufactures and supplies advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) based on its EyeQ family of systems-on-chips for image processing for solutions such as lane sensing, traffic sign recognition, vehicle and pedestrian detection. Its products are used by both the OEM and aftermarket sectors. The company’s visual interpretation algorithms drive

Existing equipment used in Australian emergency vehicle ‘green wave’ trial. Despite the lights and sirens, accidents between the motoring public and emergency vehicles on their way to/from the scene of an incident are relatively frequent. Figures from various sources indicate that road accidents are the second most frequent cause of death for on-duty fire fighter fatalities and that more than 90% of ambulance and fire engine accidents occur when the lights are on and the sirens wailing. Other studies indica

The FOTsis project addresses the imbalances between the vehicular and infrastructure sides of cooperative ITS infrastructures and looks to ensure road operators can help to enrich future technology applications. By Jason Barnes. Several developments have conspired to push the vehicular side of cooperative infrastructures/cooperative ITS to the fore in recent years. The automotive industry’s rather shorter product development and lifecycles combined with economic slowdown in many regions gave rise to the not

The increasing capability of satellite navigation is helping vehicle manufacturers and local authorities as well as individual drivers and fleets. In comparison to the physical ITS infrastructure in towns and cities and on motorways and highways, satellite navigation (satnav) systems have come a long way in a short time. Many (if not the majority) individual drivers and fleets use or have access to a satnav and now the vehicle manufacturers and even local authorities are beginning to utilise satnav derived

Inherent weaknesses in satellite communications are leading several countries to re-evaluate terrestrial-based backup systems. There is a tale frequently told in satellite navigation circles, of how landing systems at Newark Airport were disrupted by a truck driver using GPS jamming equipment as he drove along the New Jersey Turnpike. While there was no threat to flight safety as the interference to GPS reference stations being tested, the story highlights how apparently benign threats have the potential t

Kapsch’s Arno Klamminger and Wolfgang Fleischer consider the need for an agnostic approach to technology for charging and tolling. Periodically, given the march of technology, it is worth pausing and taking stock of where we have got to and where we go next. Such reflections are necessary if we are to take full advantage of what we have at our disposal and, potentially, avoid decisions which push us down technological culs de sac. A look at the use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based technol

JJ Eden, President and CEO of the Alliance for Toll Interoperability, talks to Jason Barnes about the new inter-agency hub, which will facilitate national transactions When it comes to achieving interoperability, the sheer diversity of technologies in operation in the US is perhaps the tolling industry’s greatest defining characteristic and its biggest challenge. The situation is in stark contrast with some other regions of the world, such as Europe where the use of common front-end Dedicated Short-Range

Erich Erker, Norbert Schindler, Peter Tschulik from Siemens Electronic Tolling examine the barriers to EETS deployment. Tolling in Europe was introduced to pay for the construction and operation of individual tunnels, bridges and highways and has evolved in major steps. The original manual tolling systems were highly disruptive to traffic flow and required the creation of large toll plazas, with multiple lanes and toll booths to ensure an acceptable throughput. With the introduction of Dedicated Short Range

Enabled and enforced by innovative use of ITS, Dublin’s new off-road cycle route is proving a hit with commuters, leisure cyclists and walkers alike as Brendan O’Brien explains. Dublin City Council’s vision is to create a city where people of all ages and abilities have the confidence, incentive and facilities to cycle. On-road cycle lanes had already been incorporated into the Quality Bus Corridors design and there is a mix of on- and off-road cycle routes. However, in 2010 the Council began work on a new

A new app that connects a vehicle’s systems to the internet opens up a range of possibilities as Jon Masters discovers. Sometimes the most straightforward or simple of ideas can be the most significant. So it seems with the latest development from Hungarian navigation software supplier NNG. The company’s software features in-vehicle infotainment systems and has launched NavFusion – which connects a vehicles’ sat nav programs to smartphones. NavFusion is being incorporated into NNG’s iGO navigation s

Citizen reporting offers the potential of gathering timely information about road conditions without the need to invest heavily in equipment or to dispatch inordinate numbers of staff to visit and report from various locations. What could be better than an army of motorists and other road users sending in reports of conditions they encounter on their journeys? Back in 2003, Wyoming DOT set up a system of enhanced citizen-assisted reporting as a way of gathering weather-related information on road conditi

The implementation of in-vehicle systems will require multilateral cooperation, as Honda’s Sue Bai explains to Colin Sowman. Vehicle manufacturers will shape the future direction of in-vehicle ITS systems, but they can’t do it on their own. So to find out what they see on the horizon, and the obstacles they face, ITS International spoke to Sue Bai, principal engineer in the Automobile Technology Research Department with Honda R&D Americas. Not only does she play an important role in Honda’s US-based ITS