Advanced Mobility and Transport Engineering

Chapter 3

Inter-vehicle Services and Communication ¹

3.1. Introduction

The context of transport-related applications has been widely dissociated from actual modes of transport. In fact, mobile terminals with fairly high processing capabilities as well as an acceptable size have only recently become popular (the first Pocket PC was created at the beginning of 2000). In the first step, the notion of transport-related applications was logically connected to a set of services that were accessible from a static machine (servers, workstations, and calculators) and that sought to simplify, for instance, the implementation of freight transportation or the management of a fleet of vehicles. As we have mentioned previously, the optimization of these means of transport and of vehicles in general was and continues to be the motivation behind many applications that seek to improve vehicle rounds, minimize costs or improve the services on offer.

An increasingly significant part of transport-oriented applications, however, is being specifically targeted at vehicles themselves, with the final goal of embedding these applications in the actual vehicles. The objective is to advise the user, as accurately as possible, according to his or her needs. These new applications offer a wide range of services. For instance, one application can guide the driver towards an available parking space. A different application can inform drivers in the case of specific events (accidents, improvement works, etc.). ...