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Renesas, eTrans Systems Partner Up to Debut Connected Parking App at CES 2017

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eTrans Systems

FAIRFAX, Va. — eTrans Systems, a leading developer of software solutions for connected and automated vehicles, today announced their collaboration with semiconductor solutions provider Renesas Electronics America Inc. by delivering a parking availability solution using dedicated short range communications (DSRC) to help enable both autonomous and driver-based vehicles to easily find open parking spots.

This technology will be showcased on Renesas’ automotive fleet of vehicles during CES 2017 (Consumer Electronics Show).  This collaboration brings together the expertise of the world’s leading automotive semiconductor provider along with an innovative startup company specifically focused on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technology solutions.

Why is this technology important?

In cities throughout the world, parking is a major issue.  It has been estimated that upwards of 30 percent of urban drivers are at any one time looking for available parking. This is a tremendous waste of both time and fuel.  eTrans’ new DSRC Parking Solution can help to eliminate this waste.

How does the DSRC Parking Solution app work?

Sensors in the parking lot can detect the availability of open spaces. When spots are available, the sensors notify the DSRC Road Side Unit (RSU), which in turn broadcasts out availability.  On-Board Units (OBUs) in the car receive the messages and then notify either the driver or the vehicle’s autonomous driving system.

“Renesas is very excited about this application, “ said Amrit Vivekanand, vice president, of Renesas Electronics America’s automotive business unit. ” We see this as an interesting use of our automobile technology in the Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) market, which is a market that Renesas is looking to further expand into.”

eTrans representatives said they look forward to try and solve the world’s parking woes together with Renesas.

“At eTrans, we see the DSRC Parking Solution as the next major piece in our Vehicle to Infrastructure application suite,” said John Estrada, CEO of eTrans Systems. “It provides an additional benefit from Connected Vehicle technology and is the foundation for solving a major urban problem.”

eTrans and Renesas plan to unveil this solution at CES 2017. For more details on the demonstration, contact John Estrada at jestrada@eTransSystems.com.

About eTrans Systems

eTrans Systems specializes in the development and deployment of autonomous and connected vehicle systems.  eTrans solutions include safety applications, mobility applications and vehicle management applications. eTrans clients include automobile OEMs, tier-1 auto suppliers and state and local governments.

Mobileye, Peloton, Savari Named Top Young Innovators

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Burney Simpson

Influential driverless firms Mobileye, Peloton and Savari have been chosen as three of the 60 young firms worldwide that are leading technology innovation.

The list of 60 Young and Reinvented Companies Set to Transform the Technology Marketplace was released recently by ABI Research, an international business research and analysis firm that covers technology.

Firms chosen were not “mega companies driving core markets” but instead were those “smaller-harder to see-young and reinvented companies that are enabling real, sustainable change from the margins of industry,” according to ABI.

Savari was chosen due to its mix of technology in the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communications arena (V2I), said James Hodgson, industry analyst, autonomous driving and location tech, with ABI.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Savari provides onboard units for vehicles along with the street-infrastructure devices needed for V2I communication to work, said Hodgson.

And Savari has some bottom-line business connections that give it an advantage, he said.

It is on the preferred vendor list of the U.S. Department of Transportation as connected tests rollout. Plus its contract with Cadillac times well as the auto OEM prepares to release the 2017 CTS with V2V communication technology.

Mobileye bends the concept of the 60 list a bit, acknowledges Hodgson, as it is a publicly-traded firm that’s comparably larger than some of the other 60 firms.

He likes what he calls Mobileye’s realistic approach to creating a map of the world by using cameras on vehicles. Mobileye announced at the CES 2016 in January its plan to partner with GM, Volkswagen, and other auto OEMs to create maps for autonomous vehicles.

That lays the groundwork for images that can support semi-autonomous vehicles in the 2025-2030 timeframe.

In comparison, competitors like HERE seek to use LiDAR and other sensors to build maps.

“We’re not ready for that, there aren’t enough vehicles on the road with LiDAR,” argues Hodgson.

The work of Peloton also fits the realistic approach to implementing autonomous and connected technology, said Hodgson.

Peloton’s Truck Platooning System electronically couples pairs of freight-hauling trucks by using V2V communications, radar-based braking systems, and proprietary vehicle control algorithms.

Tests have shown paired trucks save on fuel due to better aerodynamics, and the monitoring of the vehicles means safer driving.

“This technology makes for a safer, more efficient way of moving goods around,” said Hodgson. “This is not 20-30 years from now. It’s achievable in the short term. It can transform its industry.”

Cohda Steps Up for Connected Test, Smart City Challenge

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Burney Simpson

Australia-based Cohda Wireless is providing its hardware and software for the $50 million Smart City Challenge and for a connected vehicle test in South Carolina sponsored by US Ignite.

In the Smart City Challenge, Cohda and its partner NXP Semiconductors will jointly provide to the winning city their Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) modules and development tools.

The wireless modules allow vehicles to securely exchange information with each other and road infrastructure. Proponents of connected vehicle technology say it will lead to safer roads as drivers and their vehicles receive information on road, weather, and traffic conditions.

The Smart City Challenge is a national competition led by the U.S. Department of Transportation designed to develop the connected city of the future. The DOT announced seven finalists in March – Austin, Columbus, Denver, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Portland, and San Francisco.

NXP, a supplier of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology, last year reported it owned 23 percent of Cohda (See “Lear’s Arada Buy Expands V2X Line”). Cisco Systems is also an investor in Cohda.

SOUTH CAROLINA TEST

The connected vehicle test on 10 miles of Interstate I-85 in South Carolina will use Cohda’s MK5 onboard units and roadside units for V2V and V2I communications.

Clemson University is overseeing the test on the South Carolina Connected Vehicle Testbed (SC-CVT) near the school’s International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR) campus in Greenville.

Cohda says its products are used in more than 60 per cent of all V2X field trials worldwide.

Sponsor US Ignite is a not-for-profit backed by the White House Office of Science and Technology and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Transportation is one of its six priority areas.

The I-85 project received a $600,000 grant last year from the NSF. The Foundation reports that the U.S. Department of Transportation will “likely require” by 2020 that all new vehicles be connected vehicles “capable of communicating with other vehicles and roadside infrastructure through wireless communications.”

The Program Manager is John Brassil of the NSF’s Computer and Network Systems division. The Lead Investigator is James Martin, an associate professor with Clemson’s School of Computing.

Video — Army to Invade Michigan with Connected Trucks

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Michigan’s Interstate 69 will host this summer a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) road test with the U.S. Army.

A convoy of army trucks outfitted with sensors, radar, LiDAR, and other equipment will travel the route and test their V2I and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications technology. The trucks will communicate with roadside transponders, sharing such information as their speed and location. The transponders will be transmitting to the trucks information on weather, speed limits, and local lane closures.

According to Automotive News, the transponders cost $5,000 apiece, and have a range of 300 yards. Paul Rogers of the Army’s tank research center in Warren, tells the pub the test equipment is about $175,000 per vehicle, though a real-world application would bring that cost down.

Check out this older video of a similar test. Couple things –

  1. This is not, repeat NOT, the Blue and Maize Glee Club prepping for The Game.
  2. The Potemkin village in this looks a lot cooler than Mcity. I’m not saying I’m just saying.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx Discusses Washington’s Work on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Technology

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U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx spoke during a summit for millennial entrepreneurs hosted by The Washington Post this week, and took a few moments to discuss connected and autonomous vehicle technology.

Foxx said that there are different debates behind connected versus automated cars, and that he expects that converging the two technologies is the true future of transportation.

Foxx said Washington is working on a set of laws and guidelines to pave the way for both technologies.

“We want to see both technologies move along, and we [the federal government] want to do the best we can to help them,” he said.

Watch video of Foxx’s comments on The Washington Post’s website.

Also recently, Foxx announced that the Department of Transportation’s field testing into allowing vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and WiFi communications to share the DSRC spectrum should be completed by the end of the year.

V2I Spectrum-Sharing Field Test is Ongoing

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Burney Simpson

Field tests of a program that allows Wi-Fi and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications to share a sector of the radio frequency spectrum are scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

The testing of the 5.9 Gigahertz (GHz) band follows the May 13 announcement by Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx that the DOT would expedite research into sharing the band with unlicensed users, such as consumers and businesses.

In 1999 the Federal Communications Commission set-aside the 5850 to 5925 segment of the spectrum for Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) to improve roadway safety. The Department of Transportation has been devoting this space, known as the 5.9 band, to V2I communications. The FCC regulates the use of the spectrum.

The week before Foxx’s announcement, officials from Cisco Systems, GM and others met with FCC commissioners to discuss testing a program Cisco called “Listen, Detect, and Avoid” protocol that could allow for use of Wi-Fi in the 5.9 band without interfering with DSRC.

Cisco has allied with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Global Automakers, two trade groups representing auto OEMs, in its development and promotion of Listen, Detect, and Avoid. A second DSRC-sharing proposal from Cisco competitor Qualcomm was turned down by the FCC.

A letter from Global Automakers to the FCC pledged to complete field testing of the Cisco concept by the end of this year.

Spectrum sharing proponents argue that Wi-Fi needs more bandwidth due to the exponential growth in the use of tablets and smart phones since the 1999 FCC set-aside.

However, some in the transportation industry active in DSRC and autonomous vehicles have been wary of the idea.

Shortly before Foxx requested the speed up of work on V2V and V2I technology, an independent committee of transportation experts recommended the DOT move slowly with sharing the DSRC spectrum with Wi-Fi uses.

The Transportation Research Board in April sent a report to Foxx that warned “proposed spectrum sharing in the 5.9 GHz band is the most serious risk and uncertainty for the program, but it is not the only one.”

The report, prepared at the request of the DOT, noted that there were many “unknowns and uncertainties” regarding implementation of DSRC by the government and industry.

In addition, Peter Sweatman, director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, testified to a Congressional committee this year that he had reservations about spectrum sharing (“GM to Congress: We’ll Test Wi-Fi in DSRC Spectrum”).

“Our entire ecosystem of companies (are) committed to V2V using the 5.9 GHz spectrum,” Sweatman told the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade. “Spectrum must be protected for (V2V) safety performance (which) depends on the absolute reliability of messages, as well as certainty in spectrum availability, in the mode that has been fully tested.”

Each V2I Site Could Cost $51,650

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Burney Simpson

The cost to deploy a single Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) roadside site could average over $50,000 but the costs for installing a national network of sites remains unclear, according to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report.

In addition, the development of a national V2I and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) infrastructure faces a number of challenges, topped by the need for greater data communication capabilities to handle the system’s Wi-Fi needs.

The GAO released last month “Intelligent Transportation Systems: Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Technologies Expected to Offer Benefits but Deployment Challenges Exist.” (Visit here for a summary).

The average cost of a single V2I site could reach $51,650 which would cover planning, equipment, installation, connectivity, and signal upgrades, the GAO determined. That would not include routine maintenance, staff training, equipment replacement, and security costs. A device might need to be replaced every five to 10 years.

The largest cost by far would be for backhaul, which covers the establishing of communication connectivity between the roadside unit and back offices or traffic management centers, along with fiber optic cables, sensors and relays. The GAO broke down the average costs as:

Planning & design:  $6,650

Equipment:               $7,450

Installation:               $3,550

Backhaul:                  $30,800

Signal upgrades:       $3,200

The single site cost can’t be extrapolated to a local, state, or national cost because “current cost data for V2I technology are limited due to the small number of test deployments thus far,” the GAO reports.

For instance. test bed deployments have varied in size, and different applications – a busy four-way intersection vs. a single-lane curve speed warning – may require different equipment.

One of the goals of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s just begun Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Project is to determine cost estimates for 56 V2I applications in three locations — New York City, Tampa, and Wyoming.

The payoffs on this investment could be huge. Since 2011, Japan has installed

about 55,000 pieces of V2I equipment on local roads, and 1,600 pieces on expressways, the GAO reported. Japan claims it has cut accident rates and reduced congestion which brought lower greenhouse gas emissions.

In the U.S., an installed V2I and V2V system could prevent 59 percent of single-vehicle crashes and 29 percent of multi-vehicle crashes, which engender costs of more than $200 billion annually, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

DSRC CHALLENGE

The biggest challenge facing the rollout of V2I and V2V technology is the capability of the radiofrequency spectrum that is now devoted to transportation safety communications, according to a survey of the 21 subject matter experts that contributed to the GAO study.

In brief, the 5.9 Gigahertz (GHz) band was set aside for Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) systems, a wireless technology that allows vehicles and infrastructure to communicate over a range of about 1,000 feet, the GAO reports.

A V2V-equipped vehicle can use DSRC to share data about 10 times per-second on its speed, position, heading, acceleration, size, and braking with surrounding vehicles and road infrastructure.

The DOT has insisted the 5.9 band remain exclusive for V2I, V2V and other traffic-oriented communications. (For its part, Japan tested its 700 MHz band for sharing capability and decided to keep it devoted to V2I and V2V communications.)

However, growing demand for spectrum for Wi-Fi from consumers, businesses, and state and local governments has spurred the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether it’s feasible to share the 5.9 band. The FCC oversees spectrum use by nonfederal users.

The GAO found that there are two important non-government efforts looking into technology that would allow for sharing of the 5.9 band:

  • Toyota, Denso, Qualcomm division CSR Technologies and other firms have been working since 2013 with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) DSRC Tiger Team;
  • Cisco Systems, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the Association of Global Automakers are in the midst of testing “listen, detect, and avoid” protocol. In May, these three, along with GM and Toyota, met with the FCC and predicted that feasibility testing of the technology could be completed by the end of 2015.

GM has publicly committed that its 2017 Model Year Cadillac CTS vehicles will have DSRC technology. That would translate into DSRC-capable vehicles for sale to the public as soon as the third quarter of 2016.

The GAO wrote its report at the request of Rep. Larry Bucshon, an Indiana Republican, Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican, and Rep. Daniel Lipinski, an Illinois Democrat. Bucshon is on the House Energy & Commerce Committee; Comstock and Lipinski are on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.

Installing a V2I and V2V infrastructure will be a huge task. A number of DOT pilots now in the works won’t be done until 2020, and the agency estimates that even by 2025 only 20 percent of intersections will be V2I capable. For now, the goal is to have 80 percent of intersections V2I capable by 2040.

V2I Coalition Update Webinar

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The Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) Coalition will hold a free webinar 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern time this Thursday to update attendees on progress since the June 4-5 meeting in Pittsburgh. Since then the Coalition has named an executive committee and the five technical Working Groups have held meetings.

The V2I Coalition is made up of members from both the infrastructure and automotive communities. It was formed by American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America).

Visit this ITS America page to register for the webinar.

Autonomous Tech Scales Capitol Hill

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Burney Simpson

The autonomous transportation industry brought its game to Capitol Hill this week, holding a nearly all-day event that featured speeches from a U.S. Senator, four Congressmen, and a number of driverless leaders, all over the course of a luncheon, a seminar, and a showcase event/cocktail party with several dozen of the top firms in the business.

Not bad for a day’s work.

Trade group ITS America put on ‘The Future of Mobility: Rethinking Transportation for the Next 30 Years’ and garnered the participation of Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, and Representatives Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican, and Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon.

While much of the conversation was positive and friendly, a few of the seminar panelists took the opportunity to raise issues that Congress may have to address someday.

  • Data Privacy and Security — Daniel Morgan, chief data officer with the US Department of Transportation, noted that the security and privacy of citizen travel data was essential but that the information could be beneficial for metropolitan planners. Morgan floated the idea that a third party firm be responsible for collecting and storing the data if people objected to the federal government holding it.
  • Reserving DSRC wavelength for V2V and V2I — Alan Korn, an executive with heavy-truck parts supplier Meritor WABCO, said the Dedicated Short-Range Communications 5.9 GHz spectrum must be reserved for Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communications to ensure autonomous driving safety. Later, Sen. Peters said that new technology may allow for the sharing of the 5.9 spectrum with other Wi-Fi users.
  • Driverless Timeline — Supplying a welcome dose of reality was Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI). Dingus said developing a truly autonomous system would be considerably more difficult and probably take longer than some recent studies and press reports suggest. Driverless vehicles will have to be safer than the much-maligned human driver but consider that the average human has one rear-end crash every 25 years, and makes 3 million braking decision in that time, said Dingus. “It is very difficult to build a system that is that robust,” said Dingus.

The exhibition hall featured 22 organizations involved with autonomous transportation development, including Eberle Design, Econolite, GM, Iteris, the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center, NXP Semiconductors, Southwest Research Institute, and Uber.

VTTI was there too taking a bit of a victory lap after its successful demo this week on a nearby highway of its driverless Cadillac SRX. The ride along featured Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and generated extensive media coverage (See “Virginia Seeks Autonomous Research Lead,” October 20, 2015).

The showcase garnered a little more exposure for the technology with another half-dozen members of Congress visiting the exhibit hall to check out the firms on display, according to an ITS spokesperson.

The day also offered an exhibit of a DeLorean car from an old movie that predicted people would fly on skateboardy-type things. This fascinated a number of Gen-Yers and Millennials who took selfies.

Photo: United States Capitol, 2015, Matt C.