The session on Standards for Connected Vehicles at the International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo (ICCVE), held December 12 through December 16 in Beijing, was opened by Rich Hulett, chairman of the IEEE Standards Association Board of Directors, on the importance of open standards.
Dr. Bob Heile, CEO of the ZigBee Alliance and chairman of IEEE 802.15 Working Group, drove home some of the more interesting aspects of the electric vehicle. Did you ever think that an electric/hybrid car looks like a load, when it’s charging from the network, but at other times, it might be a source of energy, either stored from the night before, or from solar panels on the roof of the house from the day before? In the latter case, it can become a mobile power generating station. Millions of electric vehicles mean hundreds of millions of kWh of energy, which if managed effectively, can help to smooth out demand and generation. While the opportunities to improve energy and transportation efficiencies abound, Heile documented some of the significant standards-related remaining challenges for both governments and industry to settle.
Next up was Qi Yang, secretary general of the China National Technical Committee of ITS standardization. She briefed the crowd on the structure of the standardization efforts within China for Intelligent Vehicles -- more than 100 standards are already published, with another 50 in process. Fundamental standards include terms and definitions, basic codes, location services. The subsystems that follow include dedicated short-range communications, traffic and emergency management, electronic toll, and other important aspects of a future ITS. She believes that the Electronic Toll services for the nation’s highways may be the first opportunity. Over the next five years, China will invest more than RMB20 billion (US$3 billion) in R&D for ITS.
Jon Adams (that’s me), chairman of the IEEE 802.15.4p Positive Train Control Task Group, routed the session toward the interaction between rubber-tired vehicles and rail transit. Consider the horrific accident in Midland, Texas, last month when a parade float carrying disabled veterans went into a grade crossing with lights, bells, and gates active, and was struck by a freight train traveling at about 100km/hr. Lives were lost, families and bodies broken. How can improvements in wireless communications between vehicles, including rail, help to reduce accidents like this?
There are more than 140,000 grade crossings in the US alone, and it’s impractical to hope that getting rid of all those grade crossings can happen anytime soon. My point was that there is room in the existing proposed standards for ITS to add rail transit to the intelligent vehicle universe, and in fact, should be done to allow rubber-tired vehicles to know, in new and intelligent ways, whether or not to cross the railroad tracks.
Bruce Kramer, from Marvell Semiconductor and chairman of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group, spoke of the automobile as a mobile office and hotspot, in addition to the work that has been done to date in establishing IEEE 802.11p as the baseline for Dedicated Short Range Communications for intelligent vehicles. 802.11’s humble beginnings 22 years ago with a use case for wireless linking of cash registers has led to dozens of amendments to that original standard, and hundreds of new applications that had never been considered before. Right now, about 3 million 802.11 chips ship every day, more than 1 billion devices getting 802.11 communications every year. Originally, it was mostly laptop PCs that used 802.11, but now connected pads and tablets are the leaders. IEEE 802.11p was a project that started in 2004, published in 2010, and is now starting to be used in ITS demonstration projects.
ASTM International representative Liu Fei highlighted a vision of future connected vehicles, where vehicles can move freely, safely, and efficiently, just like a fish swimming in the sea. For this to happen, there needs to be an integration of advanced transponders, network, computation, auto-control, and advanced automation. Associated technologies include GPS, RFID, cellular, and DSRC. Challenges exist -- one thing is innovation, the other is to establish standards that all can follow and to work to drive down cost so that all may have access.
Yatin Trivedi, who is on the board of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization, stressed the importance of open standards and open collaboration among all interested parties, not just specific stakeholders. Standards education is vital to teaching why standards are important -- proprietary approaches often fall short when presented with new or unforeseen environments. Engineers also may find value in taking advantage of existing standards rather than “reinventing the wheel.” Silicon circuit designers don’t need to also develop the process to manufacture the raw silicon or set standards for how that is done. They are able to focus on what their customer really needs by building on what others have done before.
There is the “chicken and egg” challenge -- there aren’t many intelligent vehicles today. There are only trials going on in DSRC, but no deployment. There are standards out there, but are they harmonized and are they the best fit for the problem statement? Transportation systems represent a massive pre-existing infrastructure, but rolling out the roadside components will be very expensive with few users. Who pays? Will the benefits be worth the costs of implementation? These are all questions that must be answered in order to move forward on this -- but a critical element is that the technology needs to be developed, improved, and manufactured to be cost-effective. There’s a great opportunity for the engineer to be a lead driver in this fast-moving technology race.
Standards are great. Free standards are even better. Take a look at shipping containers as an example. Keith Tantlinger invented a better way to pick and stack shipping containers. The patent for the tech was given away to the public and became the industry standard used worldwide. Prior to this, a container would go from place to place without some being able to handle the box. Now, that is no issue.
Read more about this in "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger" by Marc Levinson.
Think how fast things are changing. I just read an article about a $14 eReader, a $40 iPad look-alike, and who knows how many other items that come out so quickly these days. Without standards, there could be limited innovation and the marketplace would be filled with console TVs, tape decks, and large cars with fins. I miss the fins, but I appreciate the vast variety of choices in the marketplace.
As an engineer, I want to know that my product meets standards that are recognized. It makes it easier to design to...
Nice article. One of the challenges for the DSRC (dedicated short range communications) vision of connected vehicles is getting people to understand what the heck that means. The "fish in the sea" concept described here is a pretty good one and it helps. For the most part, though, I've found that the buying public could care less, and certainly isn't demanding DSRC communications. Even though the connected vehicles idea has tremendous promise in terms of saving lives, it appears that consumers are far more concerned about mobile phone call quality inside their vehicles. Seems like it would be a lot easier to make standards for connected vehicles if the world knew what that meant.
Standards are vital to broad success and risk reduction. Standards developed by all interested parties, in a transparent and open process, like those promugated by the IEEE and similar entities, are the way to go.
For the automobile, I come from the same space as many others - that of the consumer. What's in it for me? Why should I care to buy a vehicle that has some sort of "connectedness" (especially since I know that's going to cost me something, much like airbags or a navigation system.) I agree that there is a general lack of understanding from the public on what this is for and what value to assign to it; it seems that even the industry has mixed ideas on what this is all about. However, conferences like ICCVE may ultimately help the industry and regulatory entities to sort out what are the most valuable and practical uses. However, I'm extremely happy that there are standards in place in the vehicle for audio file sharing, EMI/EMC, DC power generation and distribution, even for things like automobile tires, fuel, etc. It makes it much more cost-effective for me to enjoy the functionality of the vehicle due to this previous standardization.
In the rail vehicle space, we're already farther along the track in terms of connected vehicles; there's real value there (safety and operational efficiency) to having each vehicle connected to a network, to have those vehicles sharing location, performance, etc., to have those vehicles be able to communicate directly with trackside infrastructure to ascertain the status of signals, track occupancy, track integrity, and any speed restrictions ahead. In addition, the US mandated certain functionality (though appropriately not the methods) through a federal law, the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which helps as a forcing function.
Yes, standards are great, but only when companies see a profit in it. 802.11 was mentioned in the article, but look how long it took 802.11N to be ratified. MUCH longer than the G standard.
Look at Betamax vs VHS, HD_DVD vs Blu-Ray. You might argue that those are closed standards. The point is, if a company sees profit in making their own, consumers are held hostage until the dust settles.
The great thing about standards is that there's so many of them to pick from, right %^)?
As you point out, sometimes someone does something in a certain way and does it well enough that others adopt the same method. VHS vs BetaMAX was two different approaches to the same problem, each supported by its own commercial entities, and the market chose which it preferred. Certainly, in that particular case, the technical performance was only a part of the selection process - financial (licensing) considerations were also an important aspect of that selection.
The road for open standards has its bumps - well demonstrated by the 802.11n effort. It is an extremely successful and well used standard, however it was sometimes challenging as everyone gets to participate and to be heard, and there were not only the usual technical participants but others who had their own agendas.
Jon, standardization is an important factor to maintain uniformity among products/services. IEEE is a major organization which is responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining the standards. I think here also IEEE can play a major role for implementing standards and such uniform standards will help to maintain a uniformity among different vendors or OEM.
An analysis of what’s needed to implement Design for Disassembly and Design for Recycling results in eight strategies engineers can use to design an intentional end-of-life stage into their products.
Government regulations, coupled with growing consumer sensitivity about data and identity theft, require that data storage organizations demonstrate proper protection and due diligence in protecting sensitive information stored inside datacenter enclosures.
When a crane doesn't have a monitoring system, crane owners schedule service every six months and simply scrap the parts they replace, even if a part has had little use and doesn't need replacing. This can cost thousands.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 3
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
6 
