Irish tech experts at TSSG are working with their European counterparts to develop a new truck navigation system to prevent vehicles being used in a terrorist attack, like reported by siliconrepublic.com.
The Telecommunications, Software and Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) has secured a major role in a €3m secure truck navigation project –TransSec.
A carefully curated selection of expert teams across Europe are working together with a leading truck manufacturer to develop a new kind of truck, fitted with impregnable road transport and dangerous goods protection systems.
TSSG brings telecoms expertise
The project includes precise vehicle positioning and navigation for on road use, including lane positioning, as well as off road use safeguards. As well as this, it includes vehicle movement monitoring for dangerous goods, with a critical area alarm and integration into the European-wide emergency eCall system.
TSSG brings its expertise in V2X communication and risk communication expertise, to the consortium. TSSG has been involved in several projects and initiatives involving cooperative communications.
V2X explained
V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication is the umbrella term for the communication system of a vehicle, where data from sensors and other sources travels via high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity. There are several components in V2X communication, including vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P); vehicle-to-network (V2N) communications; vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I).
A recent report on V2X from Huawei’s German research centre said: “While this example might seem far into the future, most of the technology needed to enable it (high precision maps, real time traffic information, sensors inside the vehicle such as radars, cameras, ultrasonic, etc.) are either already available or will be in the near future. The most prominent missing component is a high reliability, low latency communications system.”
TransSec will also provide vehicle communication security for critical information exchange as well as on-board, pre-crash environment detection of vulnerable objects, both on and off road.
The plans also feature protected, autonomous emergency manoeuvring for crash prevention.
The project is financed under the Horizon 2020 Galileo-GSA-2017. TSSG is working with European partners including Daimler AG, Universitaet Stuttgart in Germany; TeleConsult Austria GmbH and Spain’s Fundacion Centro de Tecnologais de Interaccion Visual y Comunicaciones Vicomtech.
A major project
Acting director of research at TSSG, Dr. Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, said: “We are growing our smart mobility/ intelligent transport group in-house and TransSec is a major project for us. It will allow us to build on our current expertise.”
Frances Cleary, TSSG research unit manager, said that the TransSec project addresses a new danger in European countries, the increasing number of terrorist attacks. She added: “Terror attacks with trucks in Nice and Berlin have shown drastically the damage a heavy truck can cause; how easy it is to misuse a truck for attacks and that the newest safety systems cannot prevent these attacks,” she explained.
The TSSG project team will help to produce an early prototype, which can be implemented by truck companies during manufacture or retrofitted to existing fleets. The system will be tested and piloted after 12, 24 and 36 months of the project lifetime.
“Terrorist attacks using vehicles are very hard to prevent – but there are security measures that truck manufactures and cities could take. TransSec will focus on developing security solutions for trucks to avoid their usage as terrorist weapons,” Cleary said.
