Welcome to a new series of 5GMETA interviews where we will get a chance to learn more about 5GMETA consortium partners, their organisation and their role in the project.
5GMETA, one of ERTICO’s Connected and Automated Driving projects, aims to leverage car-captured data through its Open Platform to stimulate and facilitate innovative products and services by feeding them the data in a configurable manner. As a result, 5GMETA will empower the automotive ecosystem, from industry players to new entrants, granting access to interoperable car-captured data. With a consortium of 12 partners, 5GMETA is continuing the work to develop the best methods to make use of a very valuable set of car-captured data exploiting the features provided by 5G networks.
The first interview is with the 5GMETA Project Coordinator and ERTICO Partner VICOMTECH.
How did the idea of the 5GMETA project come up and how does this project fit into the priorities and strategies of VICOMTECH?
The growing amount of available car data can generate new business opportunities. For the automotive industry, the exploitation of car data is strategic for improving predictive maintenance, enhancing safety and security, as well as improving the development and validation of machine learning models expanding their datasets. High-tech internet giants, such as Google, Amazon, Apple, or Alibaba, which exploit digital platforms with data-driven business models have also targeted the car data and devices ecosystem. However, not only big companies but also high-tech SMEs and start-ups will become key players in the car data monetization landscape bringing free inspiration creativity, agile and quick development of digital innovations and a realistic/pragmatic business scale. To enable this, openness in terms of car data access is required. So, we identified that what was really missing was a platform that could make car data available to third parties, and we developed a project to solve this technological gap.
VICOMTECH has extensive experience in the intelligent transportation system (ITS) field, with several previous projects related to Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) and Big Data exploitation. Some of these projects have been coordinated by VICOMTECH (VI-DAS, INLANE, Cloud-LSVA), and we are really interested in continuing to expand our knowledge and experience in these areas, as well as in creating new assets that could be transferred to the industry.
Tell us about the role of VICOMTECH in this project.
VICOMTECH is the project coordinator, as well as the WP3 leader. WP3 deals with the development of the 5GMETA data platform. So VICOMTECH is involved in general management tasks as well as in leading the development of the software modules of the 5GMETA platform.
Can you give us updates about the latest developments?
We are currently in month 18 of the project, so we have already finished the specification stage and we are deep into the development stage. Some preliminary versions of the 5GMETA platform modules are already available. There will be incrementally refined with the objective of having a stable and functional first release of the 5GMETA platform by end of May.
What are your next steps in the project?
The next step is a face-to-face meeting to be hosted at VICOMTECH on February 23 and 24 to plan the last months of the first reporting period. We are looking forward to the first release of the 5GMETA platform and the use cases. There are also several deliverables scheduled for this period, so we are quite busy at the moment.
How will VICOMTECH use the results from the project? What are your plans to build upon these results for future initiatives? How will the results help VICOMTECH’s s own strategy?
VICOMTECH is a non-profit research institute so we do not directly commercialize any product, but we transfer our technology to our industrial partners. Our main mission is to respond to the Applied Research, Development and Innovation needs of businesses and institutions in our environment, enabling them to confront new financial and social challenges, thus improving their competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Would you like to add anything more?
I would like to invite everyone to stay tuned to 5GMETA news on our website. You will also be able to download our public deliverables when available.
5GMETA project is co-funded by the EU’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 957360.
