SAFESPOT

Supporting smart vehicles on smart roads

The key to avoiding road accidents is to extend the driver’s view of his/her environment in time and space, improving the driver’s access to vital safety-relevant information, and enhancing the precision, reliability and quality of this information.

Obtaining such a broad view of the vehicle’s environment is only possible through collaboration between the infrastructure’s and the vehicle’s sensing abilities. The SAFESPOT project aims to develop and test the technology that will enable such cooperation, devising a “Safety Margin Assistant” that will increase the amount of information available to drivers. By combining quality data from roadside sensors and data sent directly from vehicles in the vicinity, advance knowledge can be gained about potential safety risks, such as an icy patch, fog bank, obstacle or accident on the road ahead (but out of sight). The communication of warnings and advice to approaching vehicles (both directly to onboard units and via roadside signals) will provide extra reaction time that may help prevent an accident.

Objectives

• Define of an open, flexible and modular communications architecture that can use both the infrastructure and vehicles as sources (and destinations) of safety-related information.
• Develop the key enabling technologies for vehicle-infrastructure cooperation: Accurate relative localisation, ad-hoc dynamic networking and dynamic local traffic maps.
• Develop a new generation of infrastructure-based sensing techniques.
• Test scenario-based applications to evaluate the impacts and end-user acceptability.
• Define the practical implementation of such systems, especially in the interim period when all vehicles will not be equipped with the technology.
• Evaluate the liability aspects, regulatory and standardisation issues which could inhibit implementation.

Duration and Funding

February 2006 - January 2010, funding through the EC Directorate General Information Society & Media

Consortium

Coordinator: Fiat Research Centre (CRF)

Partners: ANAS S.p.A, Autostrada Brescia Verona Vicenza Padova S.p.A, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Bundesanstalt für Strassenwesen, CREATE-NET, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique, Centro Studi Sistemi Di Transporto, Centro de Tecnología de las Comunicaciones S.A., CG Côtes d’Armor, Compagnie Financière et Industrielle des Autoroutes, Continental Teves AG & Co OHG, DaimlerChrysler AG, Dip. di Ing.Biofisica ed Elettronica - Univers. degli Studi di Genova, ERTICO, Fundación para la Investigación y Desarrollo en Autom, DLR, IBEO Automobile Sensor GmbH, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Kapsch TrafficCom AB, Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées, Lacroix Traffic, Magneti Marelli, MIRA Limited, Mizar Automazione S.p.A, Navteq, TNO, Piaggio & C. S.p.A, PTV, Politechnika Warszawska, Provincie Noord-Brabant, Q-Free ASA, Renault France, Regienov, Renault Spain, Rijkswaterstaat, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens VDO Automotive AG, Société pour le Développement de l’Innovation dans les Transports, Swedish Road Administration, Technische Universitaet München, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Tele Atlas NV, Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo Sociedad Anónima Unipers, Thomas Miller & Co. Ltd, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of Stuttgart, Volvo Technology Corporation, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Contact
Zeljko Jeftic

+32 (0)2 400 07 31

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