Traffimatics: Enabling Better Interaction between Traffic Managers and Drivers

Today’s production cars incorporate a highly complex pervasive computing environment. Typically, cars have more than 50 microprocessors interconnected by a variety of in-vehicle networks. These systems provide highly complex functionality to deliver the services required by the driver and passengers. As a bi-product, masses of transient data are produced that could be processed and used to support many novel applications. These applications will contribute to safety, and road management, by combining status information with the geographical context, and then by sharing this intelligence with processors and databases in the infrastructure. Traffimatics is a collaborative concept evaluation project that explores the potential for novel applications to be supported by linking the traditionally uncoordinated developments of invehicle technology and infrastructure information systems. It makes use of standard vehicles, which are fitted with a Traffimatics platform. The platform is connected to the vehicle’s control buses, via the OBD test sockets provided as part of the standard build. This approach has enabled a number of novel applications to be evaluated at test sites in England at Nottingham and at Adastral Park, near Ipswich. The objective has been to show the potential of the concept, rather than develop robust products or services.