Autonomous vehicles provide information to improve safety services they consume

Starting in September 2020, International 5G-SAFE-PLUS project aims to provide a new level of safety in traffic with state-of-the-art communication and driving systems.

Data collected by instrumentation onboard modern vehicles enables various advanced services, which benefit meteorological forecasting as well as optimizing the maintenance of the roads. On the other hand, similar services may be utilized by automated vehicles to enhance safety, especially, in challenging weather or road conditions.

At the same time, automated vehicles can provide an entirely new set of monitoring data for enhanced service quality. So far, the adoption of such services has suffered from insufficient communication media. 5G network is expected to offer the first scalable solution for this.

“Vehicles will be connected to each other, the roadside infrastructure, and the cloud-based services always through the most optimal means of communications,” summarises project coordinator Pekka Eloranta.

For supporting the strict real-time requirements of the envisioned services and ensuring scalability, the solution includes means for detecting local information, for example fog, and combining information from different sources. Services will be validated in pilot constructions hosted by the partners.

“Services are focusing especially on road weather and safety, not forgetting road maintenance,” explains Dr Timo Sukuvaara from Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Parallel communication methodologies are exploited, in order to ensure instant delivery of safety warnings, not forgetting cybersecurity.

“Information security and privacy play key roles as well and they will be considered in the project,” says national coordinator in Finland, Dr Tiia Ojanperä.

Wide co-operation leads to high level services

The project consortium consists of a wide variety of organizations. Sitowise coordinates the project with its strong background on traffic environment design. VTT is leading the Finnish part of the project, towards Business Finland. VTT and Unikie are working with autonomous driving development. Finnish Meteorological Institute represents meteorological science and authority, while Destia focuses on the road maintenance perspective.

Vaisala and Teconer are manufacturing equipment for road weather monitoring, Infotripla providing online traffic and road weather services. Wedge networks from Canada represent the high expertise in security and privacy in cooperative systems. Beia Consulting from Romania targets for the analysis and evaluation of the business and market potential.

New partners with high level expertise will also join the project soon.

Further information:

Pekka Eloranta, leading consultant, Sitowise Oy, tel. +358 40 5050 1818, pekka.eloranta@sitowise.com

Dr. Tiia Ojanperä, research team leader, project manager, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., tel. +358 40 758 3526, tiia.ojanpera@vtt.fi

Dr. Timo Sukuvaara, senior research scientist, group manager, Finnish Meteorological Institute, tel. +358 40 529 4977, timo.sukuvaara@fmi.fi

Project website