Location Based Systems

Five German towns, Hamburg, Munich, Ingolstadt, Düsseldorf, Dresden and Braunschweig are to become testing grounds for self-driving cars, Minister for Transport Alexander Dobrindt has told tabloid Bild am Sonntag. Dobrindt made the announcement at the start of a funding programme for automated driving, for which the Ministry of Transport will provide US$89 million (€80 million) in funds towards a research project by 2020. He said: “Automated driving systems are gradually taking effect. Automated braki

US driver Joshua Neally made it to safely to hospital by putting his Tesla Model X into Autopilot mode when he suffered what was later diagnosed as a pulmonary embolism. The lawyer was travelling home in growing rush-hour traffic when he began to suffer severe pain in his chest and stomach. Instead of calling an ambulance he used the car’s self-drive mode to negotiate the 20 miles to the nearest hospital. He told Slate that he manually steered it into the parking lot and checked himself into the emergenc

London Live, the capital’s TV channel, is to partner with Waze, the community-based traffic and navigation app, for its live traffic update service which will be launching mid-August 2016. Waze is the free crowd-sourced navigation app that is powered by 50 million monthly users from around the world that contribute real-time road data within the app. London Live viewers will receive the latest real-time reports on live traffic conditions and incidents during morning and evening rush hour commutes. Fo

The increasing availability and accuracy of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is opening up low-cost options in many areas as David Crawford finds out. Boosting commercialisation of European global navigation satellite system (EGNSS) technologies for ITS initially depends heavily on demonstrating competitive and cost/benefit advantages obtainable from the deployment of EGNOS (the current European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), and ultimately the EU’s Galileo constellation (see box). So,

US Automotive Logistics (USAL) is to trial Car Delivery Network’s new electronic logging device (ELD), which captures truck and driver performance, GPS and hours of service data and transmits it back to CDN’s cloud servers. CDN has developed the new technology to support automotive carriers in the US, as both electronic logging and electronic reporting of hours of service (HOS) will soon be a legal FMCSA requirement. The ELD devices are connected to the truck’s CAN bus and driver’s tablet via Bluetoo

The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) will host three free public webinars on the Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program. Offered by the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO), the webinars will explore the insights, challenges, and lessons learned from the Concept Development phase of each of the Connected Vehicle Pilots. In September 2016, three Connected Vehicle Pilot sites, (Tampa/THEA, ICF/Wyoming, and New York City Department of Transportation) will embark on a

German automotive supplier ZF has acquired a 40 per cent stake in Hamburg-based Ibeo Automotive Systems, a specialist in LiDAR technology and the development of environmental recognition software with a particular focus on applications for autonomous driving. The two companies plan to develop the next generation of LiDAR technology for vehicle applications and autonomous driving, without the rotating mirrors contained in current LiDAR systems. According to ZF, LiDAR expands its current sensor portfo