A-VIP: Anonymous Verification and Inference of Positions in Vehicular Networks

MiniconferenceInternational audienceKnowledge of the location of vehicles and tracking of the routes they follow are a requirement for a number of applications, including e-tolling and liability attribution in case of accidents. However, public disclosure of the identity and position of drivers jeopardizes user privacy, and securing the tracking through asymmetric cryptography may have an exceedingly high computational cost. Additionally, there is currently no way an authority can verify the correctness of the position information provided by a potentially misbehaving car. In this paper, we address all of the issues above by introducing A-VIP, a lightweight framework for privacy preserving and tracking of vehicles. A-VIP leverages anonymous position beacons from vehicles, and the cooperation of nearby cars collecting and reporting the beacons they hear. Such information allows an authority to verify the locations announced by vehicles, or to infer the actual ones if needed. We assess the effectiveness of A-VIP through both realistic simulation and testbed implementation results, analyzing also its resilience to adversarial attacks

Recolha de dados em veículos conectados para aplicações de segurança rodoviária

The increasing growth of the automobile industry and the need of overusing personal vehicles amplifies problems directly related to road safety, such as the degradation of the quality of the roads, the increase in volume of the automobile flow, and through the addition of dangerous weather events caused by climate change. To alleviate these emerging problems, intelligent cooperative communication systems (C-ITS) and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions emerge, allowing the overcome of human and local sensory systems limitations through the collection and distribution of relevant data in connected vehicles, which is fundamental in finding solutions that transform the concept of Smart Cities into reality. This dissertation implements an intra- and inter-vehicle sensory data collection system, starting with the acquisition of relevant data present on the CAN bus, collected through the vehicle’s OBD-II port and external sensors. Use is made of short-range communications such as Bluetooth-Low-Energy (BLE), Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) in conjunction with long-range cellular communications (LTE/5G). Data access endpoints are provided through an API and a MQTT broker. At last, logging methods are developed to allow conscious debugging of these systems, as well as to evaluate timing restrictions. The results of the experimental tests carried out reveal the usefulness of the acquired data, which allows the realization of detailed longitudinal analyzes of dangerous roads, as well as notifying, in near real-time, adverse road conditions to drivers. Therefore, the data collection system developed reveals itself as a potentially valuable tool for providing useful information both to competent authorities and to the common population, as a method to improve road safety.O constante crescimento da indústria automóvel e a necessidade do sobreuso do veículo pessoal amplificam problemas diretamente relacionados com a segurança rodoviária, tais como a degradação da qualidade das estradas, o aumento do volume de fluxo automóvel e o acréscimo de eventos metereológicos perigosos causados pelas alterações climáticas. Como forma de atenuar estes problemas emergentes, surgem os sistemas inteligentes de comunicação cooperativos (C-ITS) e de internet das coisas (IoT), que permitem ultrapassar limitações humanas e de sistemas sensoriais locais através da recolha e distribuição de dados em veículos conectados, algo fundamental para encontrar soluções que transformem o conceito de Smart City em realidade. A presente dissertação implementa um sistema de recolha de dados sensoriais intra- e inter-veículares, começando pela aquisição de dados relavantes presentes no barramento CAN, coletados através da porta OBD-II do veículo e de sensores externos. É feito uso de comunicações de curto alcance tais como Bluetooth-Low-Energy (BLE), Veículo-a-Veículo (V2V), e Veículo-a-Infrastrutura (V2I) em conjunto com comunicações celulares de longo alcance (LTE/5G). São fornecido endpoints de acesso aos dados através duma API e de um broker MQTT. Por fim métodos de logging são desenvolvidos para permitir depuração consciente destes sistemas e avalição de requisitos temporais. Os resultados dos testes experimentais efetuados revelam a utilidade forte que os dados adquiridos contém, por permitirem a realização de análises longitudinais detalhadas a estradas de perigo, assim como para fornecimento, em quase tempo-real, de condições adversas da estrada a condutores. Deste modo, o sistema de recolha de dados desenvolvido revela-se como ferramenta potencialmente valiosa para o fornecimento de informação útil tanto a autoridades competentes como à população comum, como meio de melhoria da segurança rodoviária.Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemátic

A Method for Sharing Traffic Jam Information using Inter-Vehicle Communication

V2VCOM2006 : Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications , Jul 17-21, 2006 , San Jose, CA, USAIn this paper, we propose a method for cars to autonomously and cooperatively collect traffic jam statistics to estimate arrival time to destination for each car using inter-vehicle communication. In the method, the target geographical region is divided into areas, and each car measures time to pass through each area. Traffic information is collected by exchanging information between cars using inter-vehicle communication. In order to improve accuracy of estimation, we introduce several mechanisms to avoid same data to be repeatedly counted. Since wireless bandwidth usable for exchanging statistics information is limited, the proposed method includes a mechanism to categorize data, and send important data prior to other data. In order to evaluate effectiveness of the proposed method, we implemented the method on a traffic simulator NETSTREAM developed by Toyota Central R&D Labs, conducted some experiments and confirmed that the method achieves practical performance in sharing traffic jam information using inter-vehicle communication

Continuum Deformation of a Multiple Quadcopter Payload Delivery Team without Inter-Agent Communication

This paper proposes continuum deformation as a strategy for controlling the collective motion of a multiple quadcopter system (MQS) carrying a common payload. Continuum deformation allows expansion and contraction of inter-agent distances in a 2D motion plane to follow desired motions of three team leaders. The remaining quadcopter followers establish the desired continuum deformation only by knowing leaders positions at desired sample time waypoints without the need for inter-agent communication over the intermediate intervals. Each quadcopter applies a linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) controller to track the desired trajectory given by the continuum deformation in the presence of disturbance and measurement noise. Results of simulated cooperative aerial payload transport in the presence of uncertainty illustrate the application of continuum deformation for coordinated transport through a narrow channel

Virtual Track: Applications and Challenges of the RFID System on Roads

The RFID System on Roads (RSR), which includes RFID tags deployed on roads and RFID readers installed on vehicles, is an essential platform for future transportation systems. It can provide unique features that are missing from the current systems, including lane level position, road traffic control information, vehicle distance estimation, real time driving behavior analysis, and so on. Based on these features, several novel vehicular applications can be implemented, which can significantly improve the transportation safety and efficiency. Specifically, the proposed applications on RSR include Assisted Navigation Systems, Electrical Traffic Control, Unmanned Patrol Systems, Vehicle Distance Estimation, Parking Assistant System, Route Tracing and Access Control, Unmanned Ground Vehicles. We also investigate the corresponding engineering/system and research challenges for implementing RSR and its applications in this article

INTELLIGENTE TRANSPORT SYSTEMEN ITS EN VERKEERSVEILIGHEID

This report discusses Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This generic term is used for a broad range of information-, control- and electronic technology that can be integrated in the road infrastructure and the vehicles themselves, saving lives, time and money bymonitoring and managing traffic flows, reducing conges-tion, avoiding accidents, etc. Because this report was written in the scope of the Policy Research Centre Mobility & Public Works, track Traffic Safety, it focuses on ITS systems from the traffic safety point of view. Within the whole range of ITS systems, two categories can be distinguished: autonomous and cooperative systems. Autonomous systems are all forms of ITS which operate by itself, and do not depend on the cooperation with other vehicles or supporting infrastructure. Example applications are blind spot detection using radar, electronic stability control, dynamic traffic management using variable road signs, emergency call, etc. Cooperative systems are ITS systems based on communication and cooperation, both between vehicles as between vehicles and infrastructure. Example applications are alerting vehicles approaching a traffic jam, exchanging data regarding hazardous road conditions, extended electronic brake light, etc. In some cases, autonomous systems can evolve to autonomous cooperative systems. ISA (Intelligent Speed Adaptation) is an example of this: the dynamic aspect as well as communication with infrastructure (eg Traffic lights, Variable Message Sign (VMS)...) can provide additional road safety. This is the clear link between the two parts of this report. The many ITS applications are an indicator of the high expectations from the government, the academic world and the industry regarding the possibilities made possible by both categories of ITS systems. Therefore, the comprehensive discussion of both of them is the core of this report. The first part of the report covering the autonomous systems treats two aspects: 1. Overview of European projects related to mobility and in particular to road safety 2. Overview for guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects. Out of the wide range of diverse (autonomous) ITS applications a selection is made; this selection is focused on E Safety Forum and PreVENT. Especially the PreVent research project is interesting because ITS-applications have led to a number of concrete demonstration vehicles that showed - in protected and unprotected surroundings- that these ITS-applications are already technically useful or could be developed into useful products. The component “guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects” outlines that the government has to have specific evaluation tools if the government has the ambition of using ITS-applications for road safety. Two projects -guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects- are examined; a third evaluation method is only mentioned because this description shows that a specific targeting of the government can be desirable : 1. TRACE describes the guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects which are useful for the evaluation of specific ITS-applications. 2. FITS contains Finnish guidelines for the evaluation of ITS project; FIS is an adaptation of methods used for evaluation of transport projects. 3. The third evaluation method for the evaluation of ITS projects is developed in an ongoing European research project, eImpact. eImpact is important because, a specific consultation of stake holders shows that the social importance of some techniques is underestimated. These preliminary results show that an appropriate guiding role for the government could be important. In the second part of this document the cooperative systems are discussed in depth. These systems enable a large number of applications with an important social relevance, both on the level of the environment, mobility and traffic safety. Cooperative systems make it possible to warn drivers in time to avoid collisions (e.g. when approaching the tail of a traffic jam, or when a ghost driver is detected). Hazardous road conditions can be automatically communicated to other drivers (e.g. after the detection of black ice or an oil trail by the ESP). Navigation systems can receive detailed real-time up-dates about the current traffic situation and can take this into account when calculating their routes. When a traffic distortion occurs, traffic centers can immediately take action and can actively influence the way that the traffic will be diverted. Drivers can be notified well in advance about approaching emergency vehicles, and can be directed to yield way in a uniform manner. This is just a small selection from the large number of applications that are made possible because of cooperative ITS systems, but it is very obvious that these systems can make a significant positive contribution to traffic safety. In literature it is estimated that the decrease of accidents with injuries of fatalities will be between 20% and 50% . It is not suprising that ITS systems receive a lot of attention for the moment. On an international level, a number of standards are being established regarding this topic. The International Telecommunications Uniont (ITU), Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Association of Radio Industries and Business (ARIB) and European committee for standardization (CEN) are currently defining standards that describe different aspects of ITS systems. One of the names that is mostly mentioned in literature is the ISO TC204/WG16 Communications Architecture for Land Mobile environment (CALM) standard. It describes a framework that enables transparent (both for the application and the user) continuous communication through different communication media. Besides the innumerable standardization activities, there is a great number of active research projects. On European level, the most important are the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative, the eSafety Forum, and the COMeSafety, the CVIS, the SAFESPOT, the COOPERS and the SEVECOM project. The i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative is an European initiative with the goal to halve the number of traffic casualties by 2010. The eSafety Forum is an initiative of the European Commission, industry and other stakeholders and targets the acceleration of development and deployment of safety-related ITS systems. The COMeSafety project supports the eSafety Forum on the field of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. In the CVIS project, attention is given to both technical and non-technical issues, with the main goal to develop the first free and open reference implementation of the CALM architecture. The SAFEST project investigates which data is important for safety applications, and with which algorithmsthis data can be extracted from vehicles and infrastructure. The COOPERS project mainly targets communication between vehicles and dedicated roadside infrastructure. Finally, the SEVECOM project researches security and privacy issues. Besides the European projects, research is also conducted in the United States of America (CICAS and VII projects) and in Japan (AHSRA, VICS, Smartway, internetITS). Besides standardization bodies and governmental organizations, also the industry has a considerable interest in ITS systems. In the scope of their ITS activities, a number of companies are united in national and international organizations. On an international level, the best known names are the Car 2 Car Communication Consortium, and Ertico. The C2C CC unites the large European car manufacturers, and focuses on the development of an open standard for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications based on the already well established IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard. Ertico is an European multi-sector, public/private partnership with the intended purpose of the development and introduction of ITS systems. On a national level, FlandersDrive and The Telematics Cluster / ITS Belgium are the best known organizations. Despite the worldwide activities regarding (cooperative) ITS systems, there still is no consensus about the wireless technology to be used in such systems. This can be put down to the fact that a large number of suitable technologies exist or are under development. Each technology has its specific advantages and disadvantages, but no single technology is the ideal solution for every ITS application. However, the different candidates can be classified in three distinct categories. The first group contains solutions for Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), such as the WAVE technology. The second group is made up of several cellular communication networks providing coverage over wide areas. Examples are GPRS (data communication using the GSM network), UMTS (faster then GPRS), WiMAX (even faster then UMTS) and MBWA (similar to WiMAX). The third group consists of digital data broadcast technologies such as RDS (via the current FM radio transmissions, slow), DAB and DMB (via current digital radio transmissions, quicker) and DVB-H (via future digital television transmissions for mobiledevices, quickest). The previous makes it clear that ITS systems are a hot topic right now, and they receive a lot of attention from the academic world, the standardization bodies and the industry. Therefore, it seems like that it is just a matter of time before ITS systems will find their way into the daily live. Due to the large number of suitable technologies for the implementation of cooperative ITS systems, it is very hard to define which role the government has to play in these developments, and which are the next steps to take. These issues were addressed in reports produced by the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative and the CVIS project. Their state of the art overview revealed that until now, no country has successfully deployed a fully operational ITS system yet. Seven EU countries are the furthest and are already in the deployment phase: Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Spain and France. These countries are trailed by eight countries which are in the promotion phase: Denmark, Greece, Italy, Austria, Belgium,Norway, the Czech Republic and Poland. Finally, the last ten countries find themselves in the start-up phase: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland and Luxembourg. These European reports produced by the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative and the CVIS project have defined a few policy recommendations which are very relevant for the Belgian and Flemish government. The most important recommendations for the Flemish government are: • Support awareness: research revealed that civilians consider ITS applications useful, but they are not really willing to pay for this technology. Therefore, it is important to convince the general public of the usefulness and the importance of ITS systems. • Fill the gaps: Belgium is situated in the promotion phase. This means that it should focus at identifying the missing stakeholders, and coordinating national and regional ITS activities. Here it is important that the research activities are coordinated in a national and international context to allow transfer of knowledge from one study to the next, as well as the results to be comparable. • Develop a vision: in the scope of ITS systems policies have to be defined regarding a large number of issues. For instance there is the question if ITS users should be educated, meaning that the use of ITS systems should be the subject of the drivers license exam. How will the regulations be for the technical inspection of vehicles equipped with ITS technology? Will ITS systems be deployed on a voluntary base, or will they e.g. be obliged in every new car? Will the services be offered by private companies, by the public authorities, or by a combination of them? Which technology will be used to implement ITS systems? These are just a few of the many questions where the government will have to develop a point of view for. • Policy coordination: ITS systems are a policy subject on an international, national and regional level. It is very important that these policy organizations can collaborate in a coordinated manner. • Iterative approach to policy development: developing policies for this complex matter is not a simple task. This asks for an iterative approach, where policy decisions are continuously refined and adjusted

Managing emergency situations in VANET through heterogeneous technologies cooperation

Nowadays, the research on vehicular computing enhanced a very huge amount of services and protocols, aimed to vehicles security and comfort. The investigation of the IEEE802.11p, Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) and Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) standards gave to the scientific world the chance to integrate new services, protocols, algorithms and devices inside vehicles. This opportunity attracted the attention of private/public organizations, which spent lot of resources and money to promote vehicular technologies. In this paper, the attention is focused on the design of a new approach for vehicular environments able to gather information during mobile node trips, for advising dangerous or emergency situations by exploiting on-board sensors. It is assumed that each vehicle has an integrated on-board unit composed of several sensors and Global Position System (GPS) device, able to spread alerting messages around the network, regarding warning and dangerous situations/conditions. On-board units, based on the standard communication protocols, share the collected information with the surrounding road-side units, while the sensing platform is able to recognize the environment that vehicles are passing through (obstacles, accidents, emergencies, dangerous situations, etc.). Finally, through the use of the GPS receiver, the exact location of the caught event is determined and spread along the network. In this way, if an accident occurs, the arriving cars will, probably, avoid delay and danger situations