Abstract
Keywords- Dynamic Navigation, Traffic Information, Car-to-Infrastructure Communication, AKTIV Research Project
With the increasing traffic flow all over Europe nowadays dynamic vehicle navigation systems, using the FM radio and the Traffic Message Channel - TMC to receive information about the current traffic conditions, almost reach their limits in supporting traffic efficiency and safety. Some industry players have already started to offer proprietary solutions to support their customers with additional information and allow optimized route calculation. Ford has teamed up with other partners from the automotive industry within the German research project AKTIV1 to specify, implement and test future standards for adaptive navigation. This paper outlines different concepts to provide dynamic and strategic traffic information to drivers.
The route calculation should not only be based on a static digital map. The AKTIV project investigates the approach of using the vehicle itself for collection and storing data while driving. The analysis of the so-called "local knowledge database" can be done in two different ways: Firstly the in-vehicle system will use the local database to learn the drivers behaviour and calculate the individual time of arrival. On the other hand the data will periodically be sent to a central server and allows the estimation of average travel times per road segment. Due to an accurate analysis of historical data, received also from other sources, and monitoring the current traffic conditions, high-quality traffic information can be generated. One opportunity to provide the data is within quasi dynamic layers on the digital map. The up-coming map database formats will allow an incremental update and no longer require replacing the complete map. On the other hand providing the most up-to-date information requires wireless communication. Therefore a new broadcasting protocol (TPEG) has been developed using the high bandwidth of digital radio. In AKTIV another alternative is applied to the system, i.e. car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication. This kind of communication will reduce the reaction time e.g. between the occurrence of a traffic jam and first adopting cars using an alternative route. Also mobile phone communication like UMTS is under investigation. The two-way communication allows the navigation system to send a travel request and receive individually filtered data. The link can be established using the driver's mobile phone wirelessly connected with a standard Bluetooth profile developed in AKTIV.
Regardless of data aggregation and communication channel the calculated route will fit much better to the current traffic conditions and will optimize individual travel time as well as balancing the traffic flow on the entire road network.