Overview
COOPERS Vision: Vehicles connected via continuous wireless communication with road infrastructure on motorways exchange data and information relevant for the specific road segment to increase overall road safety and enable co-operative traffic management.
Project Mission: To define, develop and test new safety related services, equipment and applications using two way communications between road infrastructure and vehicles from a traffic management perspective.
COOPERS aimed to build upon existing equipment and infrastructure as far as possible to incorporate bidirectional infrastructure-vehicle links as an open standardised wireless communication technology. The role of motorway-operators in offering and retrieving safety relevant and traffic management information for specific road segments on European motorways based on infrastructure and in-vehicle data was a subject to be investigated.
COOPERS followed a 3-step approach for implementation of I2V communication:
- Improve road sensor infrastructure and traffic control applications for more precise situation based traffic information and driver advice. Establish a link between road tolling systems and I2V concept.
- Development of a communication concept and applications able to cope with the I2V requirements in terms of reliability, real time capability and robustness and considering different technologies (DAB, CALM, etc.).
- Demonstrate results on important sections of European motorways with high density traffic in NL, GER, AUS, IT and develop deployment strategies for mixed environment.
Funding
Results
COOPERS provided vehicles and drivers with real time local situation based, safety related traffic and infrastructure status information distributed via dedicated Infrastructure to Vehicle Communication link (I2V).
This approach extended the concepts of in vehicle autonomous systems and vehicle to vehicle communication (V2V) with tactical and strategic traffic information which could only be provided by the infrastructure operator in real time. I2V in this respect will significantly improve traffic control and safety via effective and reliable transmission of data fully adapted to the local situation of the vehicle (ensemble of vehicles). I2V will extend massively the responsibility and liability of the infrastructure operator compared with today in terms of reliability and accuracy of information to advice drivers / vehicles. The highest effect of I2V communications will be achieved in areas of dense traffic also known as areas where risk of accidents and traffic jams is extremely high. The real time communication link between infrastructure and vehicle can also be used vice versa for V2I communication utilising vehicles as floating sensors to verify infrastructure sensor data as primary source for traffic control measures.