Networking & Communication Systems

Berlin has become the first capital city to introduce a wirelessly charged electric bus, as part of a project funded by Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. The Berlin Transport Authority, Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) has introduced four Solaris Urbino 12 electric buses equipped with the Bombardier Primove inductive charging system and traction equipment from Vossloh Kiepe. The buses now operate on the 6.1 kilometre line 204 between Südkreuz and Zoologischer Garten (Hertzallee). Vos

A recent report from Navigant Research, Connected Vehicles, examines the market for connected vehicles, with a focus on the key components of vehicle-to-external communications (V2X) communications technology and factors that may influence successful deployment. The study provides an analysis of how these factors, including the cost of hardware, regulations, potential societal benefits, and security and privacy concerns, are projected to affect OEMs, hardware and software suppliers, regulators, and intellig

Moxa has introduced new technology which it claims improve network reliability for smart transportation applications. V-On Video Always On is a video stream recovery technology on Moxa's latest Ethernet switches that provides 50ms redundancy for multicast video streams when used with Moxa's Turbo Ring or Turbo Chain. The company says that with a simple configuration setting, the technology enables the video stream to resume almost as quickly as the network itself.

Launched at the 2015 International Transport Forum (ITF) in Leipzig, the latest mobile app from software manufacturer PTV Group combines tourist information, events programmes, transport information or the latest mobility options in a single app.

According to the Japan Times, Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is concerned about the possibility that a cyber attack on self-driving car systems might lead to traffic accidents. It has drawn up guidelines in a bid to defend against the hacking of a proposed next-generation driving support system that aims to help accelerate the development of autonomous driving cars. The ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) Connect Promotion Consortium, which is made up of automakers and electronics-m

The Iowa Department of Transportation has teamed up with a smartphone navigation app developer Waze to enable motorists to access and update real-time traffic data. The app uses input from the world's largest community of drivers to report and avoid many types of traffic disruptions. The new Waze layer on the 511 traveller information system is available through websites, phones and mobile apps. The layer shows Iowa DOT-filtered crowd sourced data from the Waze data feed that might affect traffic, suc

The Finnish Meteorological Institute is currently testing two-way delivery of local weather data as Timo Sukuvaara explains. Road weather information is one of the key ways in which ITS can help reduce traffic accidents and fatalities – which is why the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has long provided road weather services. Now, the CoMoSeF (Cooperative Mobility Services of the Future) project has been developing communication methodologies to deliver road weather services directly to vehicles and g

The University of Twente in the Netherlands has recently installed a new parking management system on the campus in an effort to optimise traffic flow. The UTwente system combines Nedap’s Sensit wireless parking sensors and Vialis’ Vivaldi traffic management system to provide real-time parking detection and parking guidance. Nedap’s Sensit system consists of wireless parking sensors that detect parking bay occupancy in real-time. This information is used to drivers to available parking spaces, decreasin

Nedap, a specialist in systems for long-range identification, wireless vehicle detection and city access control, will use the 2015 ITS World Congress, to introduce the next generation of Microwave RFID reader, Transit Ultimate, that identifies vehicles and drivers at a distance of up to 10 metres (33 ft.) and a travelling speed of up to 200 km/h (125 mph) by using semi-active (2.45 GHz) RFID technology. The new Transit Ultimate contains a second communication channel at 433 MHz that enables a wider bandwid

Siemens new Sapphire journey time measurement system (JTMS) offers a low cost, simple to deploy solution for recording and analysing journey times and network performance, says the company. The system uses the Bluetooth technology commonly found in mobile phones, aftermarket accessories, in-car communication and audio systems and is compact and simple to install, minimising street clutter. The system is fully integrated into the Siemens Stratos hosted traffic management system, providing all the necessar