Vodafone plans road traffic of the future with ZF in Düsseldorf

According to a recent press release, Vodafone and ZF are working on the “road traffic of the future” in Düsseldorf. A key element is the cloud-based V2X platform (“Vehicle to everything”) for vehicle manufacturers and traffic authorities. The goal is to provide real-time safety information for cars, trucks, motorcycles, cyclists and pedestrians.

Traffic information could be shared in real time with cars, smartphones and navigation systems, regardless of manufacturer, through the V2X platform. The system open to suppliers is called STEP (Safer Transport for Europe Platform). It is aimed at authorities and companies that transmit safety and traffic information directly to map applications on smartphones and in-vehicle navigation systems. In the future, STEP could also be used to analyze road usage based on anonymised and aggregated position data to enable the exchange of vehicle, cyclist and pedestrian data with road infrastructure. transportation.

Bus and truck drivers could, for example, be notified of cyclists or pedestrians who are in or approach their blind spot in network traffic. And in combination with cameras, radars and LiDAR sensors, automated driving of trucks in convoys on highways is also possible. Of course, the prerequisite for this would be that “everyone is networking with everyone” whenever possible. Of course, this could still be a sensitive issue in terms of data protection, as the potential for abuse is enormous.

On a test track in Aldenhoven and in the future innovation center in Dresden, Vodafone will work with the automotive industry on other traffic-related real-time applications in 5G and 6G networks. Vodafone’s V2X STEP platform is a cloud-based platform which the company says is built on open industry standards. It is based on the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) open network protocol for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. This protocol allows the transmission of telemetry data between different devices. For the exchange of security-related information, Vodafone uses the “Vodafone V2X Message Broker” on its own “multi-access edge computing platform”. Registration is required to use the platform. For developers and makers of third-party apps, Vodafone offers an interface specification (API) and software development kits (SDKs) for Android and iOS.

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