Floating Automotive Data Collection

In its early stage, tracking devices were primarily used to locate stolen vehicles. However functionalities can be expanded very far. Built-in functions can be added and extra sensor signals can be added to the standard registrations. Especially, fleet management solutions are envisaged currently. With the use of intelligent transport systems, service companies can provide live traffic data, picked up from sensors that monitor vehicle speed, combined with incident reports. The tracking device can be in direct contact with a central server or can send regular reports and data.

Within the Floating Automotive Data Collection (FADC) project (carried out with the support of the European Union (EU)–Asia Information Technology and Communications (IT&C) Programme) experiments were done on the combination of a tracking device with automated traffic jam detection. On specific routes in Belgium and in India, speeds and acceleration profiles were monitored as a function of location, in order to automatically detect deviations from normal fluent traffic. The detection can be done on-board the vehicle and in case of traffic jam detection, the device will send a message to a central server, which maps different traffic jam detection massages. The system will of course operate optimal if a sufficient number of vehicles in the traffic are equipped with such device.