SafeTRIP

SafeTRIP is a research and development project co-funded by the European Commission in the Seventh Framework Programme FP7 (call SST.2008.4.1.3 - Integral system solutions for safety).
SafeTRIP stands for "Satellite Applications For Emergency handling, Traffic alerts, Road safety and Incident Prevention". The project started in October 2009 for a duration of 36 months.
The SafeTRIP project answers to the EU recommendations to provide to the European citizens a transport system that meets their needs and expectations in terms of safety, comfort and efficiency.
In the past decade a lot of researches have been dedicated to develop driver assistance systems based on autonomous sensor technologies that are able to perceive the traffic situation surrounding the vehicle and, in case of danger, to properly warn the driver. Moreover, a lot of researches have been dedicated to improve the quality of the infrastructure, giving weight to “an intelligent road infrastructure” concept, leaned to the Intelligent System infrastructure (ITS).
The SafeTRIP project “added value” is to seek the “combination” of the information from vehicles and from the infrastructure to users, taking benefits from a new satellite technology, and adopting an original holistic approach “infrastructure / vehicle / drivers”, where all of these actors have a key role to play in the safety chain.
Origins
The SafeTRIP idea was born from the launch of W2A (April 2009), an S-band satellite owned by Eutelsat SA and operated by Solaris Mobile Ltd, which allows providing new safety services in the transport domain. This geostationary satellite is the first in Europe specially designed for providing DVB-SH broadcasting and 2-way data communication services in S-Band, with the ability to use small omni-directional antennas on mobile units.
Leaned to this innovative technological foreground, the consortium of the SafeTRIP project thought to all the potential capacities which could be offered to the transport field and all the positive impacts, namely in terms of safety, that could be imagined for every European citizens.
This is why SafeTRIP is probably one of the most innovative projects of the last decades regarding its horizontal and holistic approach: infrastructure / vehicle / drivers.
Drivers also recognise that a comfortable and quiet travel is a safer travel; this is why the passengers of the vehicles (car, bus), could be offered through the DVB-SH technology a wide range of additional services that will make their travel more convenient and comfortable:
* Digital radio
* Mobile TV
* Music and Video on demand.
Satellite-based communication systems for use in homes and cars have been adopted by consumers in many parts of the world. The consumer market is therefore ready to adopt a satellite based ITS platform that will give them access to a number of services from within the vehicle - just as they would from their homes.
Objectives
SafeTRIP will integrate innovative satellite technologies and communication features:
* accurate satellite positioning (GPS / EGNOS / GALILEO)
* 2-way data communication via satellite
* Digital radio broadcast via satellite in the new S-band
These unique features allow exploring a new generation of services in order to improve the road safety and to contribute to the environment protection.
The concept of SafeTRIP is to provide an integrated system platform that will allow any third party company to develop applications for the road market.
During the project, we will develop the SafeTRIP platform and demonstrate the following applications:
* Provision of real-time traffic information and warnings generated by the collection of data coming from other vehicles
* Emergency call system
* Tracking in real-time of vulnerable passengers’ transports.
The SafeTRIP project includes also the development of a low cost in vehicle receiver (On-Board Unit: OBU), which is called the “GREENBOX” (referring to the black box in plane).
The GREENBOX will be developed in a family of receivers, covering all segments of the market. The target price of the low segment product is around 100 €, which will be made possible through mass market production. The GREENBOX receiver that will be installed in vehicles will provide a large range of personalised services, including emergency call, incident/accident warning, optimised navigation, vehicle monitoring, driver behaviour monitoring, traffic and incident data collection, and other services.
But the most innovative part of the GREENBOX is that it will be designed to "host" external applications developed using a simple SDK. Thus, on the same model than the Apple Application Store, developers will be able to provide applications for the transportation market.
The Consortium
Given the focus of the project on an advanced vehicle communication system for transport applications, the consortium has been carefully selected to gather partners from the road, insurance and transport industry with a mid and long term perspective along with telecommunication companies and research centres and universities.
The Consortium is a balance of Industrials, SMEs, research institutions and universities, all with specific knowledge and experience relevant to the projects objectives. This leads to a very good complementarity of the consortium in terms of technical expertise and contributions on the one hand and in terms of domain of activity and business on the other hand. Note that the originality of the consortium is to merge companies coming from the transportation industry with partners from the IT domain.
The Consortium of the SafeTRIP project involves multi-disciplinary expertise split among 20 partners from 7 European countries: France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, United Kingdom & Poland. This geographically-scattered consortium brings up a great opportunity to exchange knowledge and expertise among different countries, gathering the specific points of view of each partner to achieve a complete and useful set of results that can be transferred easily to the market.
Service operators
Masternaut (fleet management) (FR)
IMA (FR)
MAIF (FR)
MACIF (insurance and assistance) (FR)
Eurolines (long distance coaches operator) (FR)
Road operators
Abertis autopistas (ES)
Acesa (ES)
Sanef (FR)
Telecommunication providers
Eutelsat SA (FR)
Retevision (Abertis Telecom) (ES)
Technical partners
DLR (DE)
Fraunhofer IIS (DE)
Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (IT)
Indra Espacio (ES)
MBI (IT)
Quantum (IT)
Management and Business consulting
Algoé (FR)
Academia
University of Budapest (HU)
University College London (UK)
PIAP Warsaw (PL)
Meeting Challenges in Road Transport
Through an extensive user requirement capture, the needs of transport stakeholders are being explored. Innovative solutions are now possible to meet the current and future challenges in road transport thanks to the key benefits of the SafeTRIP platform listed below:
:* Since one of the main components of the SafeTRIP platform is satellite communication, the primary advantage is the extended coverage - instantaneously possible without investment in the deployment or update of existing terrestrial infrastructures: the reception is ensured on all routes, highways and rural, and certainly without any environmental impact on the landscape.
:* Secondly, in the context of cross border ITS services, the benefit of a satellite communication resolves the handover from one national network operator to another, which is often a non-negligible issue in terms of roaming costs.
:* Thirdly, the SafeTRIP platform has the ability to access vehicle information through the Controller-Area Network (CAN) bus from the OBU. This has been possible through the use of industry approved non-invasive proprietary technology. It is therefore possible to install the SafeTRIP OBU on both old and new vehicles, and be able to access vehicle information (e.g. fuel consumption, engine faults, sensor readings) which is crucial for the several ITS services.
:* Last but not the least, the SafeTRIP platform is built as an open platform on which additional services and applications can be added, without installing additional components on the vehicles: a single On-Board Unit capable to provide all the functionalities required by the users of the car or truck, from safety to infotainment.
Emergency Services
text abt emergency services
East-European Borders
East-European border crossing presents a major challenge for land transportation in Europe and neighbouring
countries. A number of factors make border crossing a complex problem to solve and affects both businesses and individuals. In spite of the abundance of ITS solutions, their limitations have restricted their adoption by businesses in Europe that operate across the East-European border. The paper Getting on the Band Wagon for Crossing Borders presented at the IEEE FISTS 2011, describes how the SafeTRIP system
architecture has the potential to overcome those limitations and offer not only hope but new opportunities - highlighting the strengths of the SafeTRIP platform which make it suitable to meet the East-European border challenge by offering an economically sustainable and ecofriendly solution.

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