Location Based Systems

A vast array of new products and systems for aiding road safety were displayed at the ITS World Congress in October. David Crawford assesses a selection of safety initiatives exhibited in Orlando. Vital roles for ITS applications in road traffic safety emerge clearly from a new report from the US Transportation Safety Advancement Group. The report has been carried out for the Next Generation 911 What's Next Forum, which is preparing the way for future development of the US national 911 emergency single call

Alexander Gerschenkron, the famous economic historian, once posited a benefit for those countries which come late to economic development: that they could introduce the latest technology and thus jump over some of the standard development paths followed by their predecessors . It is entirely possible to make the same observation of late-comers to ITS: that they can gain from the pains of those who went before and more easily implement best practice in ITS. As a consequence, it is entirely likely the Abu Dha

ITS Japan's Chairman Hiroyuki Watanabe talks to ITS International about his country's progress with cooperative infrastructures and how the experience gained to date can benefit similar initiatives elsewhere. Japan gave the rest of the world a taste of the cooperative infrastructure future when, in 1996, it went live with the Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS). Designed to provide real-time traffic information and alerts to in-vehicle navigation systems with the dual aims of increasing safe

U-blox, the Swiss positioning and wireless chip and module company, has announced the official AT&T approval of LISA, the world's smallest surface-mount 3G module for use on AT&T's mobile broadband network. The device is targeted for use in M2M, telematics and other mobile devices for a wide variety of applications such as fleet management, emergency call, Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL), asset tracking, security systems and remote metering. The unit also includes U-blox's proprietary CellLocate technology

eCall misses the point and is only a tacit acknowledgement that the road safety issue has not yet been adequately addressed, according to FEMA's Aline Delhaye. According to the Federation of European Motorcyclists' Associations (FEMA), the European Commission's (EC's) ambitions for eCall implementation are premature and fail to take account of all road users' needs or of technological progress elsewhere.

Izon247 has announced the beta release of what it claims is the world's smallest and most covert GPS tracker commercially available. The unit incorporates GPS, GSM and RF, yet it measures just 45x45x9mm including battery.

Swiss-based U-blox, a leading provider of wireless and GPS semiconductors, has opened a second office in China, located in Shenzhen.

PTV AG has announced what it claims is the first solution that enables users to verify and, if necessary, modify a string of GPS coordinates (tracks). The new xMapMatch Server software component validates and corrects GPS coordinates using the underlying street maps, which is particularly useful for fleet management and transport data warehouse applications, pay-asyou- drive scenarios and floating vehicle data collection. As the company points out, GPS coordinates which are sent from the vehicle to the serv

Iteris has signed a definitive agreement to sell its vehicle sensors business to Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems, a member of Knorr-Bremse Group. The sensors business encompasses a portfolio of vehicle active safety systems including lane departure warning, forward collision warning, and blind spot warning, as well as SafetyDirect software that analyses real-time driver performance. “The divestiture accomplishes two objectives,” said Abbas Mohaddes, president and CEO of Iteris. “It enables us to concentra

A new solution developed as a consequence of the UK's Freeflow project fuses GPS and UTC loop data to give more accurate predictions of journey times, benefting network managers and travellers alike. By Matt Cowley and Gareth Jones, Trakm8 and John Polak and Rajesh Krishnan, Imperial College London