Helping cars and infrastructure cooperate

Date: 23 March 2006

The CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems) project was kicked-off 14-15 March 2006 in Brussels. Coordinated by ERTICO, CVIS is a major new European research and development project aiming to design, develop and test the technologies needed to allow cars to communicate with each other and with the nearby roadside infrastructure. The kick-off event, held at Volvo’s premises, included a General Assembly of its 63 consortium members. The European Commission DG Information Society and Media is supporting the CVIS project - whose offical start was 1 February - with a maximum grant of €22 million towards the project budget's of €41 million.

CVIS Project Manager of ERTICO Paul Kompfner remarked that, "CVIS’ achievements will increase road safety and efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of road transport. The project’s ambition is to begin a revolution in mobility for travellers and goods, completely re-engineering how drivers, their vehicles, the goods they carry and the transport infrastructure interact."

Direct driver influence

With CVIS, drivers will directly influence the traffic control system, and get guidance to the quickest route to their destination. Information shown on road signs will be available wirelessly and shown on an in-vehicle display. Such displays can also warn drivers of approaching emergency vehicles, allowing emergency personnel to reach accidents faster with less danger for themselves and cars along their path. In the same way, hazardous goods shipments can be tracked at all times and have priority along a pre-selected safe route.

However, all of this can only happen if there is full interoperability in the communication between different makes of vehicle as well as between vehicles and different types of roadside systems. CVIS will build on the ISO “CALM” standards to develop a world "first": a standardised networking terminal capable of connecting continuously and seamlessly using a wide range of communication media - including mobile cellular and wireless local area networks, short-range microwave (DSRC) or infra-red. The same CVIS “box” can serve both in the vehicle and in roadside equipment.

To validate the project’s results, all CVIS technologies and applications will be tested at one or more test sites in six European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands/Belgium, Sweden and the UK.

However, technology is not the only stumbling block on the road to a reality where every car, traffic light, road sign and kilometre of roadway is equipped with a CVIS-like system. A number of non-technical obstacles will also have to be overcome, and CVIS will create a toolkit to address key deployment enablers such as user acceptance, data privacy and security, system openness and interoperability, risk and liability, public policy needs, cost/benefit and business models, and roll-out plans for implementation.

Work in CVIS' subprojects is also underway, with activities on use case and requirements definition currently being addressed. More information about these and other project details will be available on the CVIS project website, to be launched later this spring.

ERTICO's Paul Kompfner, CVIS Project Manager	CVIS consortium members had their say in selecting the official CVIS logo at the General Assembly	European Commission CVIS Project Officer Francisco de Lacerda Melo Ferreira

For more information, contact cvis@mail.ertico.com or visit the CVIS project page