V2 V V2 I Apps Come To Michigan Test Bed Article 9 1 11

The Connected Vehicle – V2V and V2I Imported from Michigan

A White Paper by Dave McNamara, Autotechinsider LLC

www.autotechinsider.com September 2, 2011

Michigan is the place to come to test new connected car technologies, which is never more true than today! Over the last year we have seen a significant expansion of the connected vehicle test bed, called Michigan Development Test Environment (DTE) ifrom the Novi area to Telegraph road for new Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) applications. The Test Bed with roadside equipment (RSE) in Oakland County, Michigan, is centered in the cities of Novi, Farmington, Farmington Hills, and Livonia with expansion into Southfield. The RSE installation covers 45 square miles, comprising 75 Center-Line miles made up of 32 Interstate and Divided Highway and 43 Arterial miles. An ongoing Michigan expansion will cover an additional 6 Arterial Center-Lane miles. New Active safety applications are now the focus of the vehicle and supplier Research and Development. See the Ford YouTube video for an example of the new collision avoidance applications possible when cars can talk to cars.ii New V2I application are possible when intersections can talk to cars, such as warning you that the traffic lights just stopped working, so you need to treat this busy intersection as a four way stop. Other V2I applications include a work zone alert that lanes are blocked and emergency vehicle approaching notification so drivers will give it the right-of-way. As an example of new V2I applications, vehicles can know when the light will change; you can be warned to slow down to stop in time. See the YouTube Video that demonstrates how the signal phase, and timing of the traffic lights.iii Today you can come to the Telegraph Road portion of the V2V and V2I Technology Test Bed to experience these new applications. An additional 22 Road-Side Equipment (RSE) have been installed in contiguous intersections as shown below.




Source: U.S. Department of Transportation These new applications provide the driver awareness of dangerous situations ahead of time so accidents can be avoided. We are quickly moving from passive safety applications (e.g. airbags) that minimize the injury from a crash to more proactive applications, which prevent crashes from happening in the first place. We should expect to see these new active safety applications in production cars and on the road in the 2013-2015 timeframe, mitigating or even avoiding crashes. I will explain why in the author’s opinion sooner not later than 2015. Relative to new active safety apps, the use of wireless communications to communicate from car to car or to the roadside brings up new possibilities. Today, we benefit from autonomous radar and camera sensors on cars, namely Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) (e.g. longitudinal control) to cameras for lane keeping (e.g. lateral control). Why do we need wireless communications for V2V and V2I if we have these very capable sensors on-board? There are two basic reasons. First, existing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) can be improved at very little additional cost. For example, ACC systems using V2V can




know the weight and trajectory of the car ahead and the road condition and therefore accurately calculate the stopping distances. The military for years has employed sophisticated “sensor fusion” to determine the exact nature of the environment or threat. Now this capability is affordable and available for our cars. Second, there is a whole suite of new active safety applications available through wireless V2I and V2V as described in the referenced YouTube videos. Other applications include, okay-to-pass, numerous intersection safety related, and curve speed warning to name a few, A favorite V2V application of mine is emergency vehicle approaching. My question when I hear the siren (if I hear the siren) is what do I do exactly, how do I get out of the way, especially in a multilane highway? Once we recognize the significance of V2I/V2V applications and the importance role in the next wave of new active safety applications, our next question is what wireless technology should we use? Our typical reaction is that next generation of cellular wireless will enable these new safety apps, because 4G LTE is just around the corner and faster is better. Upon reflection, there are significant functional and reliability requirements that cellular wireless may not meet. Many safety applications require low latency (e.g. an air bag deployment decision is in the low millisecond range) and deterministic communications, meaning it’s difficult to envision sharing critical bandwidth with other applications. Imagine sharing bandwidth between a YouTube video download and a curve speed warning. The auto industry has understood this problem for years and has used different/dedicated networks on cars to segment the critical safety apps from entertainment. In the same way, cellular will have an important role in providing mobility information, such as traffic data. The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) and specifically the National Transportation Safety and Highway Administration, (NTSHA) declared Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) as the wireless technology of choice for new V2V and V2I applications that require low latency, urgent and local (short-range) in nature. "We envision connected vehicle technology as a platform to save many lives on America's roads, and foster innovations we've yet to imagine - a game-changer for vehicle safety," said National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland.1 NHTSA has declared in several public forums (“workshops” around the US) that they will begin the process to initiate a regulatory decision in 2013, a decision on whether to require inclusion of these new technologies and applications in new vehicles. Many expect that the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) will be the tool to

1 USDOT Press Release -‐ ttp://www.rita.dot.gov/press_room/press_releases/rita_005_11/html/rita_005_11.html




facilitate compliance that is new cars will get the 5th star if they employ this new active safety technology. What is so special about DSRC and why not concentrate on using commercial cellular, especially 4G when it eventually comes? DSRC (802.11p) operates similar to WiFi (802.11x) but in the 5.9 GHz band regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. David Strickland reminded us at the well-attended Telematics Update Detroit conference this June 2011 just this; "I'm just putting everyone on notice. A car is not a mobile device. I'm not in the business of helping people tweet better. I'm not in the business of helping people post on Facebook better." Cellular was designed to help people communicate better across large geographical areas and communities; with Twitter as a popular social app. DSRC as shown was designed with a different mission. It is well suited for urgent and local safety messages and compliments cellular communications. It’s a wide area LAN technology and DSRC is a local safety LAN. They can work together to provide seamless information. Cellular can tell you that traffic is blocked for miles ahead and DSRC that the car immediately ahead of you just initiated an emergency panic stop! What does the future hold and where are we going? The important and first observation is that the USDOT is committed to a national infrastructure that will emerge as connected regions of DSRC to enabled V2V and V2I applications. The infrastructure as shown in the diagram below will have interoperable components, specifically the RSEs with a variety of on-board equipment solutions, OEM installed and aftermarket. I expect eventually every state DOT will create test beds, which will expand and be integrated nationally from the viewpoint of data sharing. The existing test beds, of which Michigan is largest, include Palo Alto, California, Mclean, Virginia, Orlando, Florida, the site of the 2011 Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress, and Manhattan, New York. Expect the OEMs and key suppliers to leverage these test beds to do the early testing of production systems. There is nothing more important than testing vehicle safety systems under actual radio reception and traffic conditions. We need to quantify how robust these systems are when deployed in a larger scale of thousands of cars. To that end, the USDOT has chosen Ann Arbor, Michigan as the safety pilot city for a large-scale deployment of three thousand cars. (USDOT RITA JPO press Release). iv In addition to the Safety Pilot vthe USDOT has sponsored Driver Acceptance Clinics viin six cities to learn how well the user interface works and how drivers respond to these new applications. The safety pilot and the supporting clinics to get real consumer feedback are the key steps in proceeding towards a NHTSA rule making decision in 2013.




Source: USDOT Lastly, come to Michigan and experience these new V2V and V2I applications on actual roads and intersections. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is the test conductor for the USDOT and can be contacted to arrange a tour and, if interested, use of the test beds. Please contact Jeremy Durst for more information:

Jeremy Durst, SAIC Michigan Operations Lead (248) 374-5098 [email protected]

You will also want to come to the ITS World Congress Technology Showcase in Orlando in October to experience these applications first hand.vii i http://www.its.dot.gov/connected_vehicle/technology_testbed2.htm ii http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF1a-‐g9suR8 iii http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R02SmHKy1ic




iv http://www.rita.dot.gov/press_room/press_releases/rita_005_11/html/rita_005_11.html v http://www.its.dot.gov/safety_pilot/index.htm vi http://www.rita.dot.gov/press_room/press_releases/rita_003_11/html/rita_003_11.html vii http://www.itsworldcongress.org/

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V2 V V2 I Apps Come To Michigan Test Bed Article 9 1 11