Attendees of the 2021 ITS World Congress next week will be able to experience how a collision-warning system from Continental can act as a digital “guardian angel,” providing protection for vulnerable road users. The system, developed in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom, Vitronic, and the city of Hamburg, warns of collisions in real-time using a smartphone. For this, the Continental solution calculates possible routes in the future using GPS and speed data from cars and smartphones in a Telekom cloud computer in the immediate vicinity.
The system uses data from traffic objects in intersection areas detected by Vitronic, stop light data, and an accurate digital map provided by the city of Hamburg. The warning of an impending collision is sent in real-time via Deutsche Telekom’s low-latency network to road users with a corresponding T-Systems app on their smartphones. The solution is currently being tested live as part of the Hamburg real-life laboratory pilot project and is installed on the test track for automated and connected driving.
“For Continental, our Vision Zero (zero road accidents) has top priority when developing new products,” said Karsten Michels, Head of Research and Advanced Development at Continental. “The digital guardian angel developed in this partnership, in combination with our other assistance systems, puts us much closer to our goal. The challenge up to now has been that the sensor technology does not capture all the people around the vehicle, depending on visibility conditions. This makes connectivity via the cloud a much more effective way of reaching and protecting a large number of road users.”
The application does not require dedicated hardware, so it can easily be integrated into apps from Deutsche Telekom or urban mobile applications like municipal transport providers. The collision warning is integrated into the vehicle functions, immediately warning drivers of imminent accidents.
“A system like this needs a high degree of interconnectivity and information processing speed to function,” said Oliver Bahns, the Head of Connected Mobility at T-Systems.
Cars and cyclists transmit their position and acceleration to Telekom’s cloud computers, which calculate the paths for the next 5 s and send a warning of any impending collision to the car and the cyclist’s terminal device in the event.
To ensure that this information reaches both road users as quickly as possible, the cloud computer is always active in the mobile network closest to the possible collision. Multi-Access Edge computing processes the GPS signal combined with other position and navigation data to locate the road users’ smartphones with an accuracy of less than one meter. Everyone who might be involved in an accident is notified in less than a second. This is done either by a warning on the assistance system in the car or by a visual and acoustic message with a vibration alarm on the smartphone that is also forwarded to smartwatches. This enables users to respond quickly to prevent an accident.
Continental, Deutsche Telekom, and Vitronic implemented the application at an intersection in Hamburg. The IDTE (Intelligent Detection and Tracking Equipment) solution, installed and operated by Vitronic in the infrastructure, monitors the entire intersection and provides data on the identified traffic participants to Continental.
Interaction with road users is handled by Continental’s collision warning system. At the intersection area, the system also accesses traffic light data from the City of Hamburg, so it can warn users heading for the intersection despite red stoplights. The solution even records near misses that traffic planners can use to make inner-city traffic safer and defuse locations where accidents are frequent. In this way, the partners are making a major contribution to making cities safer and greener.
The technology behind the ITS World Congress demo, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, is expected to be available for mass roll-out in 2024. In the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Continental and its partners are using self-driving shuttles as a supplement to public transport in another project as part of the real-life laboratory.
Continental and partners’ vulnerable road user ‘guardian angel.’
