Skip to main content

ITS World Congress first for Q-Free solution

Q-Free’s Universal ITS (U-ITS) Station will be help to achieve two significant firsts at the ITS World Congress Melbourne. The outdoor demonstration area will host the first Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) showcase of its type in the southern hemisphere. It will also be the first implementation anywhere in the world on live intersections of C-ITS technology and applications using open, agreed standards.
September 13, 2016 Read time: 2 mins

108 Q-Free’s Universal ITS (U-ITS) Station will be help to achieve two significant firsts at the ITS World Congress Melbourne. The outdoor demonstration area will host the first Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) showcase of its type in the southern hemisphere. It will also be the first implementation anywhere in the world on live intersections of C-ITS technology and applications using open, agreed standards. 

The U-ITS Station is a compact, comprehensive C-ITS solution providing full hybrid, ETSI/ISOstandard communications. Available in roadside and in-vehicle versions that use many of the same components, its conformity with internationally agreed C-ITS standards enables ready interfacing with other manufacturers’ technologies. This is significant — previous ITS World Congress outdoor demonstrations have featured proprietary standards or effectively represented a single supplier’s product set. 

During the ITS World Congress, U-ITS Station-equipped coaches travelling to and from the outdoor demonstration area will pass through a series of intersections. The roadside U-ITS Stations will broadcast standard messages including intersection map and traffic signal status (SPaT/MAP) roadside awareness messages (CAM) and roadside service announcements. A central ITS station will provide open web access, enabling smartphone, tablet or PC users to follow the demonstration live.

“The Universal ITS Station is the most technically advanced ITS product we have ever created,” says Knut Evensen, Q-Free’s Chief Technologist. “This is the third generation unit and it is now a very highly capable and — crucially — robust solution for the C-ITS environment. Interoperability testing with other manufacturers went entirely according to plan. Everything worked just fine, first time.

 “What we now have is an effective, accessible, totally standards-compliant solution that is fully capable of supporting C-ITS pilots around the world.

We’ve already achieved our first sales in this respect,”  Evensen said.

Q-Free also will be exhibiting within the main exhibition where the U-ITS Station, as well as the company’s other solutions that support smarter mobility in both urban and inter-urban environments, will feature.  

Related Content

  • Alliance stages North American back office interoperability trial
    December 4, 2013
    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
  • Cubic to highlight intelligent transport solutions at ITS European Congress
    June 21, 2017
    Executives from Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS), will discuss multiple topics at the 12th ITS European Congress in Strasbourg, following the conference theme of “ITS Beyond Borders.”
  • Authorities select enforce now, pay later option
    October 19, 2015
    Outsouring of enforcement services is on the increase internationally as highway and traffic authorities seek further support in resources and expertise from the private sector. Jon Masters reports. Signs of a significant company making moves into a new market can usually be read as indication of likely growth in that particular sector. Q-Free’s expansion from tolling operations into general traffic enforcement could be viewed as surprising as it is moving into what are relatively mature and consolidating m
  • ANPR integrity is as important as capability
    February 1, 2012
    Increasing the capability of automatic number plate recognition should go hand-in-hand with efforts to ensure number plates' integrity, says the ESVA's Viv Nicholas. Before we apply increasingly sophisticated technology to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), says the European Secure Vehicle Alliance's (ESVA's) executive director Viv Nicholas, there is a lot we can do to make the task of vehicle recognition simpler by addressing issues relating to the number plate itself.