Walkie-Talkie

Project "Walkie-Talkie: Vehicular Communication Systems to Enable Safer, Smarter, and Greener Transportation" (TIN2011-27543-C03)

Walkie-Talkie is a coordinated project between the Networking Group of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the Dept. of Information and Communications Engineering (DIIC) of the University of Murcia and the GATcom group of the Miguel Hernandez University of Elche . It is funded by the spanish "Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) ".

In the same way that communication between vehicles and infrastructure has been crucial for the success of current applications used in vehicular scenarios, where the best example has been the widespread use of the GPS technology, we certainly believe that communication architectures integrating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication will be the key to success for the next generation of smart cars. In fact, major automobile manufacturers, as well as public and private entities dealing with traffic management, are currently considering applications that require a high level of connectivity, including: (a) active safety, accident detection, and traffic management applications, (b) smart route planning applications that will improve traffic efficiency, (c) fleet management and vehicle monitoring applications, (d) entertainment and comfort applications and, more recently, (e) new services aimed at reducing the effects of CO2 emissions, thereby improving greener transportation.

These new applications depend on efficient vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure cooperative communication, an area that so far is only evidenced in traditional RDS/TMC networks- as well as in the emergence of the new e-call system. It is therefore mandatory to promote the research in the area of vehicular area networks based on technologies such as Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs), in order to provide intelligent transportation systems (ITS), integrated into "on-board” units providing intelligent cooperative communication interfaces on the road which enable safer, smarter, and greener transportation. Toward this direction we propose the Walkie-Talkie project, which mainly focuses on the integration of V2V, V2I, and I2V communication systems to equip vehicles with a set of intelligent services addressed for safer, smarter, and sustainable driving based on intelligent distribution and management of textual and multimedia contents.

The proposal has two key points to be solved: (i) the integration of technologies and protocols for V2V and V2I communication, and (ii) the efficient distribution and smart management of driving information both locally (V2V) and globally (V2I and I2V). These two aspects will be the foundations upon which we will develop our context aware services architecture to enable intelligent transportation systems.

The results obtained in this project will report business opportunities to the different entities involved in vehicular scenarios, i.e., manufacturers, telecommunications companies, service providers, governments and end users. The areas in which Walkie-Talkie will initially explore will be safety on the road, intelligent information distribution, greener transportation, and digital entertainment.

Various companies are involved in this project:

Recent activities

October 28th - 24th, 2013:

The GRC Group attended to the LCN 2013 Conference in Sydney, Australia.

Juan-Carlos Cano attended to the LCN 2013 Conference Conference, which was held in the beautiful city of Sydney. At the Conference Juan Carlos presented a Paper and a poster at the main LCN track as well as a Demo related to the DrivingStyle application developed at the GRC group.

October 6th - 9th, 2013:

Manuel Fogue, awarded with the Second place of the prestigious IEEE ITSS Best Ph.D. Dissertation Awards

Manuel Fogué, Piedad Garrido, and Francisco J. Martínez attended to the ITSC 2013 Conference, which was held in the amazing and historical Steigenbergen Kurhaus Hotel located in the Hague, the Netherlands. The IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems is the annual flagship conference of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. In particular, the GRC Members attended to the Conference since Manuel was awarded with the Second place of the prestigious IEEE ITSS Best Ph.D. Dissertation Awards. His advisors (Piedad and Francisco) and all the GRC members are really proud of this amazing prize. Congrats Manolo!