Skip to main content

Cooperative driving will become common by 2020, say researchers

The international Celtic Plus Co-operative Mobility Services of the Future (CoMoSeF) project which, involved the development of data exchange between vehicles and infrastructure, has just presented its findings. The resulting communication system provides drivers with real time information on road weather, road conditions and incidents. During the project a cooperative roadside weather monitoring station run by the Finnish Meteorological Institute relays the latest reports – and weather updates covering
July 1, 2015 Read time: 3 mins
The international Celtic Plus Co-operative Mobility Services of the Future (CoMoSeF) project which, involved the development of data exchange between vehicles and infrastructure, has just presented its findings. The resulting communication system provides drivers with real time information on road weather, road conditions and incidents.

During the project a cooperative roadside weather monitoring station run by the Finnish Meteorological Institute relays the latest reports – and weather updates covering larger road areas – to vehicles in the vicinity, using short-range WLAN-based ITS-G5 technology and the mobile phone network. This data is received by a vehicle system developed by 814 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The system can receive multichannel data either via ITS-G5 mediating between vehicles, or the mobile phone network. The switch from one signal reception technology to another is so fast that there are no breaks in contact with the station.

Data transfer techniques of this kind, which seamlessly combine several radio systems, have recently emerged as a potential model for the ITS solutions of the future.

”As it proliferates, cooperative driving based on communication and data exchange between vehicles and road network systems will noticeably improve traffic safety,” says Johan Scholliers principal scientist at VTT.

Cooperative traffic systems will extend the electronic horizon of vehicles, so that drivers can prepare in advance for hazards which they know are lurking behind corners. This will help drivers and vehicles to anticipate traffic more effectively and to decide accordingly on issues such as the right speed and choice of route.

These solutions represent a step towards automated, smart traffic. It is predicted that cooperative driving will be part of everyday life by the 2020s. One objective which is likely to accelerate uptake lies in markedly lowering the price of the required vehicle infrastructure.

One of the project's test sites has been the Hervanta feeder road and E63 exit ramp close to Tampere, where a cooperative road side unit with camera and laser scanner has been installed on the ramp for fog surveillance purposes. Another station relaying weather data to vehicles has been installed along the E75 road south of Sodankylä town centre.

In addition to Finland, intelligent traffic solutions and services have been developed and tested under the CoMoSeF project in France, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, Turkey and South Korea, where road traffic faces different challenges to those of Finland.

The three-year CoMoSeF project was led by the Tampere company DDS/Mobisoft which, in addition to project coordination, gathers real-time traffic information from taxis in the city and relays processed traffic and road condition information to in-vehicle devices in taxis. Finnish participants included the Finnish Meteorological Institute, VTT, Infotripla, Taipale Telematics and Centria. There were also enterprises and research institutions from six other countries: France, Spain, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey and South Korea.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Avoiding the call of the wild
    June 29, 2018
    Hitting an animal on a rural road can be fatal for all parties involved – but detecting and avoiding them requires clever technology. Andrew Williams carefully scans the horizon for details. Wildlife-vehicle collisions are an ever-present threat in rural areas around the world, and there is certainly nothing funny about suddenly finding an angry moose in your headlights on a sharp bend. A variety of detection and avoidance systems are currently in use or under development to help prevent your vehicle being
  • Automatic signal control to prevent emergency vehicle collisions?
    March 14, 2012
    Field trials under way in Arizona promise eradication of accidents between emergency vehicles at intersections – as part of a national focus on ‘intelligent signal’ infrastructure. Collisions between police cars, ambulances and fire crews as they reach intersections at the same time, with equal priority given by all signals set on red, are as serious as they sound absurd. For emergency teams and those in need of their help, the consequences are dire. The solution could come from application of connected veh
  • New constellation will add accuracy and security to GNSS services
    December 20, 2013
    With Galileo’s early services scheduled to start next year, Fiammetta Diani is enthusiastic about the opportunities the EU’s GNSS system will offer. Next year will be a very exciting one for Galileo, the EU’s fledgling satellite constellation; additional satellites are scheduled for launch and, as European Commission Vice President Tajani recently announced, early operational services will be starting towards the end of 2014. So it really is ‘all systems go’ as Fiammetta Diani, market development officer in
  • Axis aids incident detection on French viaduct
    October 31, 2016
    France’s first AID system has halved attendance time on the Calix Viaduct. TheCentre for Traffic Engineering and Management (CIGT) at Caen in northern France manages 367km of the national network in the Manche/Calvados district including the 1.2km long, 15-span Calix Viaduct across the Canal de Caen à la Mer.