Halmstad University wins the CVIS Application Innovation Contest
Kristofer Lidstroem from Halmstad University in Sweden claimed the top prize in the final of the CVIS Application Innovation Contest 2009 which was held at the 16th ITS World Congress in Stockholm. The second prize was taken by Lodgon, Belgium and the two third prizes were given to Ygomi and CIT. The companies were awarded €20,000, €15,000 and €7,500 respectively.
Halmstad University took gold with a pedestrian safety system where the vehicle informs the intelligent intersection when the system detects that the driver is behaving unpredictably. Both driver and pedestrian are warned either through the HMI displays in the car or on a mobile phone, or by altering traffic light phases. The driver behaviour is compared to reference models implemented using a potential field approach.
Lodgon’s silver winning Vehicle Social Networking (VSN) application is a community service where the vehicle interacts with the local environment and the public internet for exchanging personal and location relevant information within a community of peers. Rather than checking all issue by hand, the community can participate in identifying, verifying and commenting on the reported issues. The system would also allow for location advertising to be inserted with a relevant context.
The two winning applications come from companies that are not belonging to the CVIS consortium and show the range of applications CVIS is supporting beyond the efficiency and support of mobility. The CVIS concept can be extended to safety and infotainment applications. Halmstad University’s pedestrian crossing warning could largely increase safety for vulnerable users such as pedestrians and bicycle drivers. Lodgon’s Vehicle Social Networking provides a community service based on vehicle to vehicle communications.
Ygomi/Connexis took the bronze prize for the evolving vehicle assistant, an info-mobility service where parking lots could be points of interest. The service aims at optimizing the travel and mobility experience of a driver, evolving in an urban and sub-urban environment. Cork Institute of Technologies took the bronze prize by applying agent technology to cooperative systems and into the vehicular environment. The Commercial Vehicular Agent System (CVAS) is a framework which allows users in a vehicular environment to access location aware trust based services.
The CVIS application innovation contest, which was launched in January 2009, aimed to assess the ability of companies external to the project to develop CVIS-compliant services. A large number of high-quality concepts were submitted. The best four submissions were invited to demonstrate their applications on the European Commission stand during the ITS World Congress in Stockholm.
After much deliberation the jury of CVIS experts form Daimler, Swedish Road Administration and Telecom Italy selected the finalists. The gold, silver and bronze applications were selected by the Congress visitors. The prizes were awarded in a ceremony presided by Juhani Jaaskelainen, Head of Transport, EC Directorate-General Information Society and Media.
For more information please contact:
Peter Christ, Project Manager; Tel: +32 2 400 07 00; Email: p.christ@mail.ertico.com
Alina Cornea, Communications Officer; Tel dir: 32 2 400 07 27; Email: a.cornea@mail.ertico.com
Notes to the editor
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About the CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure System) project.
CVIS is an integrated R&D project co-funded by the European Union under the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) priority of the 6th Framework Programme for Research. With a budget of over €40 million and a consortium of over 60 leading industrial, public and academic organisations, CVIS will complete its 4-year programme in early 2010. CVIS is coordinated by ERTICO-ITS Europe.
CVIS aims to design, develop and test the technologies needed to allow cars to communicate with each other and with the nearby roadside infrastructure. CVIS’ achievements will be applied in test sites in seven countries across Europe, to increase road safety and efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of road transport.
CVIS Application Innovation Contest.
In order to demonstrate the true openness of its innovative architecture, the EU-supported CVIS Integrated Project has published an Application Submission Contest (ASC). The purpose of this contest is to make the ITS community aware of the CVIS concept and demonstrate its possibilities by selecting the most promising applications and support the contest-winning teams to develop and demonstrate their applications in a cooperative systems test bed in Germany, France, Italy, UK, Sweden, Netherlands and Belgium.
Halmstad University is a university which crosses boundaries - for the development of organisations, products and quality of life. The University undertakes outstanding research in which many areas attain international levels of quality and participates actively in society and community development.