UK ITS development and test facility given the go ahead

Date: 4/11/2009

Source: telematicsupdate.com

innovITS – ADVANCE, a new UK ITS development and test facility is a result of a collaboration between innovITS, MIRA (Motor Industry Research Association) and TRL  with funding support provided by Advantage West Midlands.

The new facility will provide an environment for ITS technologies to be tested and developed into commercial products. The new innovITS - ADVANCE centre will comprise a number of circuits offering the ability to replicate a wide range of real-world traffic scenarios - including, for example, complex urban multi-lane intersections and bi-directional flows - any of which may be subjected to numerous traffic control systems and strategies.

Each of the test circuits will be equipped with numerous telecommunications networks including GSM, GPRS and WiFi, and systems monitoring the precise positions of vehicles.  All systems will be controllable in order to suit the particular requirements of each test so that new telematics-based innovations can be tested thoroughly in a number of potential operating environments that may be encountered in real-world application.

It is anticipated that the centre could be used to carry out projects on:

• collision avoidance and mitigation
• driver behaviour studies
• vulnerable road user detection
• road sign detection
• traffic management
• time/ distance position-based charging.

ITS Radar International will continue to monitor developments

Keywords: Communications, Cooperative vehicle systems, In-vehicle systems, Payment, Project, Safety, Traffic management