"Safe Intelligent Mobility – Test Area Germany (SIM-TD)” project kicks off
From the lab to the roads "Green light” for the world’s largest field test of vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication Innovations for traffic safety and mobility
Frankfurt am Main, 20 November 2008. The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) have given the green light for the project "Safe Intelligent Mobility - Test Area Germany (SIM-TD)" initiated by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA). The world's largest field test of communication between vehicles, and between vehicles and the traffic infrastructure (car2X communication), is a cooperative project involving the automotive companies, the telecommunication industry, scientists and the public authorities to investigate the contribution that can made by intelligent communication systems to improving traffic safety and mobility.
SIM-TD provides the main pre-requisites for a sustainable rise in traffic efficiency and greater safety on the roads by means of car2X communication. The project makes it possible for the first time to investigate all the associated technologies and applications in situations approaching everyday operation. This includes in particular passing on early reports of hazards and traffic information, better recording of the traffic situation and complementary services such as infotainment applications.
Over the next four years the practical project will establish a testing area in Germany's Rhine-Main conglomeration (in and around the city of Frankfurt), where several hundred test vehicles will be equipped with car communication units (CCUs). They can communicate both with a variant of the WLAN standard optimized for the automotive setting and existing cell phone technologies such as UMTS. Information is exchanged between the vehicles themselves and also between vehicles and roadside units (RSUs) at selected traffic nodes that in their turn link up to traffic control centers. The local, practically real-time traffic information gained from the vehicles is passed on to all vehicles equipped with a CCU in the area covered, and also made available to the traffic control centers. There the information received is evaluated and sent to vehicles that could potentially be affected. All participating motorists thus receive individual information about the traffic situation on the road ahead. A warning signal alerts drivers to a traffic jam concealed by a bend in the road, or a road accident that happened only minutes before.
To realize this project, within the VDA a consortium for the SIM-TD project has been formed comprising the major interest groups, for introducing a car2X communication system of this type. The companies Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen, Opel, Ford, Audi, Bosch and Continental represent the German vehicle-makers and the supply industry. Deutsche Telekom contributes its expertise as a global telecommunication provider. The Hessisches Landesamt für Strassen- und Verkehrswesen (Hessian state office for roads and transport) and the City of Frankfurt am Main stand for the federal states and the municipalities. The world of science is represented by the University of Würzburg, the Technical University of Berlin, the Technical University of Munich and the University of Applied Sciences of the Saarland, plus the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft applied research society.
The total funding for the SIM-TD project comes to around 53 million euro, with about 30 million euro of direct project promotional support from the BMWi and the BMBF. In addition, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (BMVBS) is investing around eight million euro in setting up roadside communication units.
Increasing traffic safety and efficiency is of great importance, especially for a transit country like Germany. The industry, public offices and scientists have already been working together for many years on solutions that reduce the number of road accidents and prevent the traffic system from seizing up. Cooperative systems, i.e. vehicles and parts of the infrastructure that communicate with one another, are the next important step towards further substantial improvements in road safety and traffic flow on Germany's roads.
The basic technology for cooperative road traffic systems was created in recent years in smaller research projects. The SIM-TD project is now taking the next logical step by developing these technologies further for use in practical operation and testing the systems in a setting similar to everyday use. It is thus tapping into the potential that this technology offers the population and at the same time ensuring the competitiveness of German industry in an important forward-looking market.
The attachment contains the SIM-TD logo in a printable version for use in publications.