Abstract
Significant research and development in Europe in recent years have been focused on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), since they are contributing to a change in mobility. The market penetration of portable navigators and smart phones is considerably increasing, but no standards directly related to the use of aftermarket and nomadic devices in vehicle exist and almost nothing is known about their safety and impacts yet. The paper presents the status and early results achieved in TeleFOT (Field Operational Tests of Aftermarket and nomadic Devices in vehicles), a Large Scale European research project within the 7th Framework Programme. The paper is structured into three main sections. The first paragraph introduces core issues TeleFOT deals with and its scenario. TeleFOT answers to a need recognised by the European Commission: the need to test via Field Operational Tests (FOT), the impacts of driver support functions on the driving task, including future interactive traffic services that will become part of driving environment systems within the next five years. Field Operational Tests in TeleFOT are based on a large number of drivers using nomadic devices on their own vehicles and to raise wide awareness of the functions and the potential these devices offer. In-field testing allows to assess impacts of such functions in a real environment, while it would be difficult to obtain the same results by internal testing. The second paragraph describes Field Operational Tests planned in TeleFOT and progresses achieved. Tests will involve up to 3000 drivers and are organized in three test communities in Northern (Finland, Sweden), Central (Germany, UK, France) and Southern (Greece, Italy, Spain) Europe. They are planned in two phases: first, short and long term testing will involve a large number of vehicles. In the second phase, detailed testing with a limited number of subjects driving instrumented cars will be carried out. Amongst TeleFOT scientific and technological objectives is to study different levels of impacts on drivers and society, including usability and User acceptance, behavior and Safety, efficiency, Green Driving and socio-economic impacts on the transport system. The last paragraph introduces the main results achieved in the project. The Authors state that the paper is original and has not been published or presented elsewhere.
KEYWORDS - Field Operational Test (FOT)- Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)– Navigation- Driver information - Mobility