Helping Cars and Infrastructure cooperate

Creation date: 03 April 2006

CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems), a major new European research and development project, aims to design, develop and test the technologies needed to allow cars to communicate with each other and with the nearby roadside infrastructure. This project started officially on 1 February 2006 and was launched at Volvo’s premises in Brussels on 14-15 March 2006 with a General Assembly of its 63 consortium members.

Participants voting for the official CVIS logo at the General Assembly

Project Manager Paul Kompfner remarks: “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.”

Paul Kompfner (ERTICO), CVIS Project Manager

With CVIS, drivers will influence the traffic control system directly, and get guidance to the quickest route to their destination. Information shown on road signs will be available wirelessly and be shown on a display in the vehicle. Such displays can also warn drivers of approaching emergency vehicles, allowing emergency personnel to reach accidents faster with less danger for themselves and for 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.

All this however, can only happen if there is full interoperability in the communication between different makes of vehicle and 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.

Francisco de Lacerda Melo Ferreira (European Commision), CVIS Project Officer

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, every traffic light, every road sign and every kilometre of roadway is equipped with CVIS-like technology. A number of non-technical obstacles will also have to be overcome. The CVIS project is therefore creating 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.The European Commission DG Information Society and Media is supporting the CVIS project with a maximum grant of €22 million towards the project budget of €41 million.

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