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Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO)

Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program

Acquisition and Installation Planning

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THEA Device Acquisition and Installation Webinar Q&A

  1. When can we expect this to roll out in commercial use as opposed to a pilot?

While the pilots are demonstrating that this technology is ready for prime time, in the end it will be up to the commercial vendors to decide when this technology rolls out on a large scale.

  1. You are using OCIT-C (a center to center protocol prevalent in German-speaking countries) to interface with RSUs?   Is that for European installations only?

We used any US SAE, IEEE and NTCIP standards published by January 2017 that we could find. For US standards we could not find, we did look to International standards, which resulted in the use of some European standards.

  1. Did Brandmotion configure the OBU's from the suppliers?

We configure the OBUs during installation. They are preloaded with applications and only have to be programmed to a specific vehicle.

  1. Where does one find the referenced SAE Paper to test the antennas?

The paper can be found here: https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2018-01-1098/

  1. Any thoughts on how to streamline the vehicle acquisition process? 9.2016-9.2018 seems like a rather long time to do this.

There is a lot that can be improved. As previously mentioned, there were a lot of unknowns in the beginning. With a greater knowledge by all parties including OBUs suppliers, things can move quicker as suppliers understand their capabilities better.

  1. Are all  OBU suppliers providing units for all 3 vehicle types (private citizen vehicle, Streetcar & Bus)?  Are they “interchangeable”?

All suppliers are supplying to private vehicles, however only Savari is supplying for transit vehicles. Unfortunately, they are not interchangeable as different applications are loaded on the transit vehicles.

  1. Are the OBU and RSU procurement specifications publicly available?

THEA will have to check on whether these are/can be made available.

  1. Can you explain details on what data Lidar collected for pedestrian safety purposes?

We are using the lidar to provide J2735 Personal Safety Messages to the vehicles. The Lidar works by shooting out beams of light, and then the range for how far away a pedestrian is determined by calculating how long it takes the light to reflect back. We are not collecting any real data, we are just collecting locations in a standardized format that cars can trust.

  1. Why are 2 DSRC antennas needed?

There is one antenna for each of the two radios on board- one dedicated to the safety channel, and one dedicated to the control channel.

  1. Are both street car systems active at all times, or just the forward-facing system?

It is just the forward-facing system that stays active.  Only one system at a time is functional. We have installed a switch that transfers control to the direction of travel.

  1. Does the system incorporate SCMS for security credentials?

Yes, we are using SCMS for all OBUs and RSUs.

  1. Do you have a user interface in the OBU installed car?

Streetcars and buses will have an interface. For the personal vehicles, the display is built into the rear-view mirror.

  1. Are you receiving any unknown BSMs other than pilot controlled vehicles?

We can see BSMs from vehicles traveling on our equipped roadways that may be using another SCMS but we do not “process” them since we are not sure if we can trust them. We ignore and discard those packets

  1. Is the CAN Decoder open source? How can other cities take advantage of that effort?

The CAN Decorder is not open source. Please contact Rafal Ignatowicz (rignatowicz@brandmotion.com) for more information on the CAN Decoder.

  1. What were the CAN Decoder issues?  Didn't you need different decoders for each vehicle model or at least vendor?

The CAN decoder had to be pre-programmed to a specific vehicle, not the vendor itself which provided some difficulties.

  1. What is the backend server capacity for the data applications? How much storage are you anticipating needing? Are you hosting in the cloud? Any storage v. processing cost breakdown you could provide?

We are not hosting in the cloud. Total hardware capacity of the main physical server is 200 GB solid state drive and 10 TB of hard drive space.

  1. What would be the order-of-magnitude cost for such a pilot deployment?

This varies on how big the project is. But costs online related to RSU/OBU deployments are a good place to start.

  1. Where do you find the referenced white paper re: HamWAN interference?

This paper is not currently publicly available.

  1. Will the pilots’ data be published on the ITS Public Data Hub?

Yes, all of the pilot’s data will be posted on the ITS Public Data Hub as it becomes available. PII is removed prior to uploading to the data hub.