Criticism of infrastructure-heavy approach to next-gen intelligent transportation systems.

1. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
IBEC3.
Benefits Of Co-operative Systems
Bern Grush, Chief Scientist
Skymeter Corporation
17th ITS World Congress, Busan, Korea
October 25-29, 20101
Thinking about
cooperative vehicle
architecture?

2. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
How should we think about
cooperative system architectures?
 What’s fixed?
 What’s autonomous?
2

3. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
NextGen intelligent integrated systems
 National and international
efforts
 VII, CVIS, Intellidrive
 Manage massive vehicle
fleets or very complex
things about a vehicle – or
both
 Sometimes we envision
participation of large fleets,
perhaps an entire extant
fleet
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4. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
New industry initiatives?
 E.g., ng Connect
 Is this the beginning of commercialization?
 Does it signal the end to government’s
dominant innovator role?
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5. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Equipment activities include:
 I2V - Tell cars local enviro &
mobility guidance
 V2I - Tell the console about
car behaviors
 V2V - Cars talk among
themselves
5

6. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Do we really need fixed infrastructure?
 Expensive
 Not pervasive
 Monolithic
 Anti-autonomous
 Anti-evolution
 Anti-innovation
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If we misjudge this, someone else will eat our lunch.

7. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Who knows?
 Randal O’Toole (CATO) says we
needs the coming revolution in
automotive technology to reduce
congestion by making cars drive
safer, faster and closer together
 Anthony Downs (Brookings) says
this technology will never work
and we are stuck with congestion,
anyway
 If O’Toole is right we need
autonomous technology
 If Downs is right we would clutter
our landscape for nothing
7
Is Downs right?

8. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Technical impedance
 Telematics and car-attached systems
can change and multiply rapidly and
dramatically (iPhone model)
 see Google self drive…
 Aftermarket devices can be now be
made sufficiently reliable
 The road-side infrastructure will
never keep up (tolling gantry model)
 There will be strong, positive
correlation between the volume and
expense of fixed infrastructure and
rapid obsolescence
8
Innovation
promotes
heterogeneity

9. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Fixed won’t fix it
 “In an era of wireless
communication, cheap sensors,
miniaturization, free storage,
free processing, redundancy
and some pretty amazing
software, there is no better way
to stifle innovation and
evolution than to stick
something in concrete.”
Grush, B., Overcoming Global Gridlock, 2011
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10. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Can we skip the infrastructure part?
 Maybe not yet
 Maybe not completely
 But pretty soon, according to
Google
 Minimize roadside
infrastructure in the interim
 Invest mostly in intelligent
telematics first
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11. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Applications include:
 V2I – about local context: guidance re speed,
conditions, construction, safety, congestion
 I2V – about the car (or neighboring context):
speed, position
 V2V – about each other or each other’s
history: collision warnings, convoys
 All solvable with little or no roadside
infrastructure
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12. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
Less roadside more in-vehicle
Reduce/replace V2I and I2V with
V2V
 Mesh Networks (e.g. Robin Chase’s
Meadow)
 On board maps and maps updates
 4G (LTE) networks can manage
continuous proximity maps updated by
vehicles recently there (subscription)
 FGPS (private, accurate, reliable,
cheap)
 FGPS + proximity sensors can provide
crash avoidance
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13. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
We need:
 Standards
 interoperability
 Markets
 value and competition
 Regulations
 Consumer protection
 Safety
 Certification
 Reliability
 Licensing
 fair market access to protect investment
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14. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
This gives us:
 Maximum autonomy
 Voluntary systems
 Rapid evolution
 Competition
 Commercial motivation
 Clutter free landscapes
 Platforms for tag-along
road-pricing
14

15. Financial-grade GPS
for mobility payments
IBEC3.
Benefits Of Co-operative Systems
THANK YOU
17th ITS World Congress, Busan, Korea
October 25-29, 201015
Think hard about
cooperative architecture
while it is still greenfield