BT Technology Journal  Vol 22 No 3  July 2004 73 Traffimatics — intelligent co-operative vehicle highway systems G Bilchev, D Marston, N Hristov, E Peytchev and N Wall This paper describes the vision of the Traffimatics project — the vision of the connected car. Traffimatics aims to develop the concept of intelligent co-operative vehicle highway systems, supporting a wide range of applications ranging from real-time traffic information and safety warnings to in-car entertainment and personal telematics. The project also investigates the possibilities of using vehicles to create a large-scale self-organising sensor and communications network enabling the intelligent co-operative vehicle highway systems vision. This paper looks into the state-of-the-art technologies that could enable the Traffimatics vision and also discusses market barriers and opportunities. 1. Introduction The increasing demand for transport creates a huge challenge to local and central governments. As it is clear that simply building new roads will not be the answer, optimal transport strategies will be needed. In particular, optimal traffic control will require a lot of supporting infrastructure including road sensors (inductive loops). What if the traffic information were gathered seamlessly by the participating vehicles and sent to the other road participants and to the traffic control centres? This is one of the goals of the Traffimatics 1 project which aims at investigating the feasibility of such a large-scale vehicle network based on an open telematics architecture. The term ‘telematics’ is most commonly used to refer to information and communications technologies related to transport; it includes both the vehicles and the road infrastructure. Transport telematics is not a new area and has been around for many years. The recent hype around telematics is fuelled by the increasing availability of low-cost hardware and software systems (following the ‘.com’ boom) and ubiquitous low-cost communications technologies. The cars have also been evolving, although at a slower pace. Modern cars have a multitude of sensors (traction, light, temperature, and surface sensors, to name a few) and intelligent electronic modules that communicate securely within the in-vehicle network. Currently all that sensor information stays in the car and is not communicated externally. But what if this information could be harnessed, communicated and interpreted to allow numerous value-added applications that will enhance the driver experience? The idea is not so far fetched and several research projects (e.g. BMW Connected Drive) have been set up to investigate its feasibility. Traffimatics is one such project [1], partially funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) that differentiates from similar projects in the area such as CarTalk [2], FleetNet [3], Drive [4], Adase [5] and Chauffeur [6], in that it looks at the problem end-to- end. Traffimatics harnesses the sensor data within the in-vehicle network, analyses the data via the in-vehicle telematics platform, and communicates useful information to the traffic control centre or to a dynamically formed mobile ad hoc network of nearby vehicles. In this respect the project is well aligned with the EC funded 6th Framework project GST [7]. This paper describes the vision of the Traffimatics project and discusses some implementation and business issues. The paper is organised as follows. Firstly, it describes the vision of the connected car which is central to Traffimatics. Then the paper focuses on the possible realisations of that vision from looking at the current state-of-the-art of in-vehicle networks, communications technologies, systems in the traffic control infrastructure and finally exploring the market issues of such a system. This paper is intended as an overview of intelligent co-operative transport solutions based on the connected-car vision. The connected car has two strands of communication, namely car-to-car and car- to-infrastructure. Applications might use either or both This paper is dedicated to the memory of David Marston, a valued colleague and a first-class scientist. During his time at BT he had been actively contributing to the areas of eCommerce, telematics and person- alisation, and his untimely death has cut short a productive career. 1 A collaboration between BT, Influx Technology, Nottingham Trent Uni- versity and Shadow Creek Consulting Ltd, supported by the UK DTI Next Wave Technologies and Markets programme.