Michigan dedicates center to studying vehicle communications
October 2, 2007 - 2:26 pm ET
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Efforts to develop vehicles that can talk to each other and to the road got a boost today with the dedication of a center here to study connected vehicle technologies.
The Connected Vehicle Proving Ground will coordinate and link test facilities and will evaluate and demonstrate connected vehicle systems. Eventually, planners hope it will be an incubator for automakers, suppliers, transportation agencies and other organizations working with the technology.
The proving ground is at the Center for Automotive Research here and is funded by the state of Michigan.
The focus will be on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-road communications.
Since 2004, a consortium of eight automakers has worked with the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop ways for vehicles to connect with each other and with roadway devices.
“The first step in the game is for vehicles to talk the same language,” said David Henry, senior manager for government collaborative programs for Chrysler LLC. He is president of the automaker consortium.
‘Test bed’ being developed
Automakers have been working with suppliers such as Delphi Corp. and Telecordia Technologies Inc. to develop in-car wireless boxes.
Automakers gradually will roll out a fleet of 25 test vehicles, Henry said.
Meanwhile, the federal government has spent about $50 million on a 43 square-mile “test bed” of roads in the Detroit area. The roads have wireless devices that will communicate with the wireless devices in the test vehicles.
The federal government has set aside a radio frequency, 5.9 gigahertz, to enable connected vehicle communication, said Greg Krueger, project manager for intelligent transportation systems for the Michigan Department of Transportation.
General Motors is investing in the technology because of its potential to prevent collisions and lessen damage, injuries and fatalities, said Robert Lange, GM’s executive director of vehicle structure and safety integration.
Nearly half of the traffic fatalities in Michigan last year were related to lane departures, said Kirk Steudle, director of the Michigan Department of Transportation.
The hope, Lange said, is that vehicles not only will talk to each other and to the road, but potentially take over braking or even steering control from the driver in order to prevent a collision.
GM has teams of researchers in suburban Detroit and in Ruesselsheim, Germany, working on connected vehicle technology, Lange said.
Sending warning signals
The researchers’ objective is to have vehicles send a 360-degree wireless signal to surrounding traffic to warn of traffic situations and emergencies.
A vehicle would learn wirelessly, for instance, that hard braking was ahead or that another vehicle had entered its blind spot. The technology would calculate the speed and path of an approaching vehicle and take appropriate action.
Also, Lange said, emergency vehicles would be able to notify drivers far in advance that they are approaching and the drivers should get out of the way.
Lange said integrating wireless technology into the road would be the most complex challenge. For one thing, society doesn’t want to spend money on road improvements, he said. But if achieved, such as system could, among other things, warn drivers of an approaching work zone and send them a speed-zone notification.
He said bringing such technologies to market would pose some of the same challenges automakers face when introducing alternative powertrain technologies: The infrastructure must be in place at the same time the vehicles are available.
“For vehicle-to-vehicle communications to be effective, it really needs to be ubiquitous among the fleet,” Lange said. That means it must be inexpensive and available in the aftermarket, not just on new vehicles.
Also, he said, a governing body would be needed to regulate, control and secure the wireless networks.
In Michigan, 1,082 people died in road accidents last year, Steudle said.
He added: “When we get the vehicles and the roadside talking together, we can really get those numbers down.”
Source:
Leslie J. Allen
Automotive News
