Today HERE announced two new research collaborations with the SWARCO Group and the Oakland County Connected Vehicle Task Force (OCCV). Together with its partners in the intelligent transportation space, HERE is showcasing technologies that have the potential to alleviate some of the chief headaches of urban motorists – traffic and parking – as well as make roads safer. At ITS World Congress in Detroit this week, HERE will demonstrate how these technologies could help cities transform their road networks.
“Cities are not getting any smaller and one of the problems that poses is more vehicles and more congestion. Fortunately, modern technologies can help,” said Ogi Redzic, Vice President of Connected Driving at HERE. “In two demonstrations in Detroit next week, we look forward to showing how the HERE location cloud can be combined with smart new technology to help cities become better places to drive a car.”
At ITS World Congress, HERE and SWARCO will demonstrate how technology can help cities like Rome better control, predict and manage traffic flows. Through SWARCO’s next generation traffic management solution, SWARCO’s traffic signal and sensor data, integrated with HERE probe data, will help city managers better predict traffic and control vehicle flow. The HERE location cloud can leverage this traffic data to enable intelligent services that help automakers optimize driving strategies for their drivers.
ITS World Congress attendees will be able to view a kiosk display of traffic in Rome and witness how the integrated offering from HERE and SWARCO can improve traffic conditions in congested cities.
“SWARCO is committed to enriching people’s lives and their intermodal mobility experience every day, through the use of advanced technology and delivery of seamless and sustainable mobility services,” said Mr. Cees De Wijs, CEO of the SWARCO Group. “With the collaboration with HERE, our traffic management and control systems are evolving by exploiting the capability to interact with the vehicles, so to address individually the road users and improving the safety, efficiency and comfort of their travel.”
At ITS World Congress, HERE will also showcase an alternate and potentially fail-safe means of maintaining accurate positioning in parts of a city where there isn’t adequate GPS coverage, such as between high buildings, in parking garages or in underpasses.
With support from the Oakland County Connected Vehicle Task Force (OCCV) and Paxgrid, HERE will show, through a parking demonstration, how this technology can provide precise location positioning of a vehicle with the use of two small roadside boxes known as WAVE DSRC units, but without GPS or cellular positioning information.
HERE is providing its precise maps for the technology, which has the potential to be a key element of future city-wide connected vehicle systems. Positioning technology like this could enable vehicles – as well as bicycles and skateboarders – to be part of a grid of moving objects. The ability for vehicles to know where other drivers are at any given moment could result in safer roads and fewer collisions. It could also help drivers overcome everyday frustrations like finding vacant parking spaces.
“My call for a countywide connected vehicle ecosystem is a great challenge. Early testing by the Oakland County Connected Vehicle Task Force and its partners like HERE indicates that we are moving in the right direction,” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said.
The traffic management demonstration with SWARCO and the Oakland County localization demo will take place on Belle Isle in the HERE lot.
