VW presented the results from German project AKTIV

Updates on VW's research regarding C2X communications:

http://www.auto-car-shop.com/18122/vw-presents-the-results-of-the-project-aktiv/

PreDrive-C2X final event

Plase see the press release below:

http://www.auto-car-shop.com/18391/pre-drive-project-c2x-reaches-its-next-phase/

Will Electric Vehicle be Cheaper?

Check this news:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/16/a123-systems-spinoff-24m-technologies-raises-16-million/

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Neuer-Energiespeicher-soll-Elektroautos-billiger-machen-1060954.html

A spin-off from ABC123 system, the lithium-ion battery maker for electric vehicles, will focus on new technology for cheaper energy storage.

If the new technology can cut off 85% of the cost of current energy storage device, which costs about $10,000 nowadays, what will happen then to the automotive industry?

Anyway, I am ready for the era of E-Car ;-)

Have fun!

Overview on U.S. IntelliDrive Project

Just today, I found a very nice overview article from Shelley J. Row about the U.S. IntelliDrive project: (So far, I have no permission granted from the U.S. DOT Federal Highway Administration’s “Public Roads”, where the article was originally published. But you can fine the full text through the following link):

IntelliDrive: Safer. Smarter. Greener.

Carnegie Mellon University: Experiments Helping to Understand the LOS Effect in VANET

By chance I discovered a very interesting web link from Rui Meireles, a PhD stundent from Carnegie Mellon Unisercity and University of Porto.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rmeirele/los/

It's about the experiments that Rui and his colleagues conducted to discover the effect of vehicles as obstacles in VANET. The results were obtained from field test in real traffic environments in downtown and highway. On the web page, vehicles' realtime position and Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) and Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) are shown through animation in together with the cam recording on the sender vehicle.

Following Rui's link I also discovered the research project "DRIVE-IN" at the Information and Communication Technologies Institute (ICTI) and the Carnegie Mellon University - Portugal Program (Carnegie Mellon|PORTUGAL) by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

The DRIVE-IN project focuses on developling geo-optimized VANET protocols, investigating distributed intelligent and collaborative car routing algorithms and exploring more application and services on the VANET platform. As research methodolgies highly efficient software simulation and a real VANET deployment consisting up to 500 texis in the city of Porto are planned.

Have fun! ;-)

U.S. DOT: Research on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Applications for the Environment: Real-Time Information Synthesis (AERIS)

20th July, 2010, the research program IntelliDrive of U.S. DOT issued a Request for Information (RFI) to obtain information from the public sector, private sector and academic communities, for planning purposes, on
- ITS application that can make use of IntelliDrive data and resource to improve environmental performance;
- capture and management of real-time IntelliDrive data relevant to environmental appliations development and performance measurement;
- evaluation techniques, performance measurement, and technologies to capture environmentally-relevant data.

The following link provides more details on this RFI:
FedBizOpps Request for Information Notice - Research on Applications for the Environment: Real-Time Information Synthesis (AERIS)

U.S. DOT : Request for Quotation - Development and Production of Dedicated Short Range Communications at 5.9 GHz: "Here I Am" Devices

16th July, 2010, a solicitation from Department of Transportation ot the U.S. (solicitatoin details on FedBizOpps website) reveals the activities of the IntelliDrive program on Safety Pilot.

From the technical Appendix, one can see the intended device is exclusively elabrated for transmitting "Here I am" message (the SAE 2735 Basic Safety Message). From the standardization point of view, the device has to comply with IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.11p, IEEE P1609.2, IEEE 1609.3, IEEE 1609.4, SAE J551, SAE J1211, SAE J2945-1 and SAE J2735-200911. To be noticed, the current technical requirements do not include any sentence regarding the positioning precision. However, there are quite stringent requirments on the PER and transmission range: "The overall device shall support vehicle-to-vehicle communication throughout a range of 1m to
500m with a maximum Packet Error Rate of 0.1%, in an open field."

Through this solicitation, the DOT would like to build up a Qualified Product List, which will be the exclusive vendor list that can participate in the procurement of the Safety Pilot.

The price of the initial devices response to the solicitation was limited to $50,000 each.

So far, there are three vendors listed on the FedBizOpps website as interested vendors. They are:
- Denso Internaltion America, INC.
- Bluemont Technilogy & Research, INC.
- Kapsch TrafficCom INC.

For the detailed information regarding the solicitation, please refer to the following links:
The official information page on the U.S. FedBizOpps website;

AKTIV - Final Project Presentation 2010-06-23

June 23rd, 2010, the four-year German research project "AKTIV" came to the end with the final project presentation on 23rd and 24th of June 2010 in the testfield of TüV Rheinland, Mendig.

Being considered as the most important project at the moment in this aera, this German national project got most of the EU car manufacturers involoved and contributed to the topics from automotive safety to environment friendly traffic management.

Following are some facts of the project:
AKTIV is the acronym used for the research initiative "Adaptive and cooperative technologies for intelligent transport". AKTIV has an overall budget of €60 million, the majority of which is provided by the research partners. The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is contributing €25 million, while the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is providing €2.1 million. The research initiative itself is divided into two main projects in which Volkswagen is heavily involved: "Assistance Systems / Active Safety" ("AS") and "Traffic Management" ("VM"). In addition to these main areas, the initiative also includes the project "Cooperative Cars" ("CoCar").

With an investment volume of €37.5 million, "AS" is the largest project within this research initiative. Besides "Integrated Lateral Assistance" ("IQF"), this project also investigates the four topics of "Active Hazard Braking" ("AGB"), "Intersection Assistance" ("KAS"), "Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety" ("SFR") and "Driver Awareness and Safety" ("FSA").

About €18 million are available in the "Traffic Management" project. In addition to other topics, Situation-Responsive Driving ("STAF") is the focus of intensive research in this project.

"The partners of AKTIV are as follows: Adam Opel GmbH, AUDI AG, AZT Automotive GmbH, BMW Group, Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), Continental, Daimler AG, Ericsson, Ford Forschungszentrum Aachen GmbH, Hessian Road and Traffic Authority (HLSV), Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft des Saarlandes - University of Applied Sciences, IBEO, ifak e.V. Magdeburg, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG, PTV AG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens AG, Technische Universität Braunschweig (Braunschweig University of Technology), Technische Universität München (University of Technology, Munich), Tele Atlas Deutschland GmbH, Transver GmbH, Universität Kassel (University of Kassel), Vodafone Group R&D Germany and Volkswagen AG. Many university and research institutes as well as small and medium-sized businesses have also been subcontracted to work on the projects."

For more information about the event, please see the press release from AKTIV official web site, Ford, VW, AUDI and BMW:

Press from AKTIV;
Press from European Ford Research Center;
Press from VW;
Press from Audi;
Press from BMW.

IEEE 802.11p is DONE!

Finally! Congratulations! :-)

"--- This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Working Group Reflector ---
...
802.11 had one item on the IEEE SA Standards Board agenda which was the request to approve P802.11p for publication.

The recommendation for approval passed in RevCom on Wednesday and was subsequently approved by the Standards Board on Thursday June 17.
... "

IBM to team with Daimler, HTI on ‘smarter’ cars Read more: IBM to team with Daimler, HTI on ‘smarter’ cars - Triangle Business Journal

IBM partner with Daimler and HTI to develop new pc for cars.

(http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2010/06/07/daily13.html)

In the meanwhile, GM and Ford are dealing with Google Maps to easy the user to transfer the destination to on-board turn-by-turn navigation.

(http://www.freep.com/article/20100609/BUSINESS01/6090364/Telematics-event-aims-to-add-technology-cut-distractions)