Search Results

Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) is an initiative of the US Department of Transportation to provide communications among vehicles and between vehicles and roadside infrastructure in order to increase the safety and productivity of transportation systems. It makes use of but is not restricted to the 5.9 GHz Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) spectrum. There are 3 major categories of applications for VII - Highway Safety, Vehicular Mobility, and Consumer & Commercial Services. There are currently approximately 42,000 traffic fatalities a year in the United States. Reducing deaths, injuries and property damage is of the highest priority in the development of VII applications. Electronic Brake Warning, Signal Phase and Timing, and Collision Detection are among the applications dedicated to improving highway safety. Increasing traffic volume is outpacing the addition of new roadway capacity, resulting in increasing delays, congestion and frustration.

Entertainment is the “killer application” for high value telematics services in vehicles. Entertainment does not require a new, untested consumer business model: consumers have been “paying” for entertainment in vehicles for decades. Examples include purchases of audio cassettes and CDs; listening to radio advertising; and more recently, the rental or purchase and playback of videotape movies in the rear seat. Today, technology advances in digital satellite broadcasting, digital compression, mass data storage, and broadband wireless communications are driving very dynamic business opportunities for entertainment service delivery to vehicles. Obvious examples are XM and Sirius Radio, DVD movies, rear seat video games, and MP3 audio playback from flash memory or hard disc drives. A more advanced example is the direct sale and download of compressed digital audio, video, and game software via wireless links that bypass the conventional bricks and mortar retail business.