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.  

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Kapsch offers EETS–compliant Tolling Services
    June 7, 2017
    Kapsch’s Bernd Eberstaller explains how the company’s new Tolling Services will help expand the number and capabilities of EETS services providers. By 2017, the European Electronic Tolling Service (EETS) should have been in operation for several years but it still remains some way away and with several significant hurdles still to be addressed. The concept behind EETS is simple enough: road users should be able to drive across Europe using only a single transponder to pay for all tolls, with the account-han
  • Motorbike manufacturers working for a safer future
    October 12, 2016
    The Connected Motorcycle Consortium is the result of the sector’s manufacturers joining forces to bring the safety benefits of co-operative ITS to motorbike riders – but it is an initiative that is facing challenges in implementing the technology. Formed in 2015 with founding members BMW, Honda and Yamaha, CMC was created following an MoU agreed to by ACEM, the peak European motorcycle organisation representing major manufacturers, in 2014. Under this MoU, manufacturers agreed to work together to develop C-
  • New approach to real time travel information - free of charge
    February 3, 2012
    Austria's national road operator, ASFINAG, has launched the TMCplus traveller information service which is unusual in that it offers encrypted-level services to all users free of charge. Martin Müllner writes
  • 'Choose your own adventure': ITS World Congress All-Access
    September 15, 2020
    The Los Angeles ITS World Congress has moved online: Shailen Bhatt of ITS America explains to Adam Hill why everyone should get involved in this global conversation – and how networking will still be a key element because 'human beings are gregarious, we want to be together'