Doha: The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) at the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) took part in Cooperative Mobility Services (CMS) Interoperability Testing (Plugtest) event for the fourth consecutive year.
It was organised by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), in partnership with ERTICO-ITS Europe from March 17 to 27 and hosted by TASS International in Helmond, the Netherlands.
Nearly 100 experts from over 40 organisations from all over the world gathered to test the interoperability of the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) systems also known as Connected Vehicles.
Connected Vehicles will change intelligent transportation by enabling wireless communication among vehicles and infrastructure in a seamless manner and using a common standard or language.
This will enable the realisation of next generation road safety systems and is considered a key enabler for future autonomous and self-driving vehicles.
Studies by the US Department of Transportation show that Connected Vehicles, if fully implemented, could mitigate up to 80 percent of road accidents. In the past, the main focus has been on how to survive accidents. Connected Vehicles aims to avoid them and enhance the daily driving experience.
To demonstrate progress in developing Connected Vehicles platforms and applications, in April 2014 QMIC held the first field demo in the Middle East and North Africa region, at the QSTP campus.
Since then, the QMIC R&D team has added more features and capabilities to its platform that allowed it to participate in this year’s Plugtest event.
Dr Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director (CEO), QMIC said: “Connected Vehicle (V2X) technologies represent a key element of QMIC’s leading and integrated road safety innovations portfolio. It complements our leading Masarak traffic and telematics platform and our Salamtek distracted driving solutions. Our participation in the Plugtest event solidifies our regional leadership position in this emerging area. We look forward to working with leading national entities in Qatar to support our vision of making Qatar one of the leading nations in deploying V2X systems to realise significant road safety and driving convenience benefits.”
The QMIC team was led by Dr Hamid Menouar, Product Manager, Connected Vehicle Programme and R&D expert.
QMIC’s Connected Vehicles platform was successfully tested against platforms of other international organisations.
The intensive testing also provides an early chance to validate conformance against the first release of the ETSI TC ITS standards. Such testing events not only enhance the quality of standards prior to deployment, but also reduce the time to market and support early deployment of the technology.
To demonstrate progress and maturity of standards, planned test cases reached 340 compared to 49 in last year’s event.
The number of organisations participating this year doubled compared to last year’s attendance which reflects the expanding global interest in development and deployment of V2X systems.
The Peninsula
