Laszlo Virag:
V2X is moving ahead with great momentum

This year we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the idea that radio communication between cars could make travel safer, which was a bold vision back then. Then later on, as mobile devices became one of the pillars of modern societies, the abundance of affordable radio equipment started to make connected cars a reality in the early 2000s. To mark the centenary, we interviewed a number of global experts who have helped and are still helping to develop the market for connected and cooperating vehicles. In the final episode of the series, we give you a glimpse into the history of Commsignia with CTO and Executive President Laszlo Virag.

Commsignia has been here for more than a decade in the not much longer history of V2X. How did it all start?

My fellow founders and I were working and researching in this area long before Commsignia. The huge EU-funded CVIS project between 2006 and 2010 included more than 60 industry partners and we were working on the software part. It was responsible for selecting the right communication interfaces for each application and providing the seamless handover between the vehicles (vehicle-to-vehicle) and the infrastructure (vehicle-to-infrastructure). There were applications like collision avoidance, map updates and even distributing advertisements on vehicles, and we were using interfaces such as wifi, bluetooth, cellular, DSRC and also infrared communication depending on the situation and the quality of service requirements. We were already working on standardization and defining quality of service at that time.

It was such a ground-breaking architecture that the world is still trying to catch up with it. There was no question then whether Uu [cellular connection] or PC5 [direct connection] was needed, yet it took many years for the industry to come to the point again that these two interfaces are not competing technologies, but complementary.

Although the platform and architecture were there, as researchers we ran into the problem that only large and expensive prototypes existed for implementation. Many articles have talked about why devices cannot be implemented with existing wifi technologies. We saw that many people were stuck with it, but we thought: that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. So we did it. We tweaked existing wifi solutions, and created a simple 802.11p-based solution that we could offer at a very reasonable price. This handcrafted solution is what started things for us: creating electronics, communications software, security components and applications.

What has helped the company grow?

At first, growth was organic, and when we had the capital, we hired our first employees. The real scale-up happened when the industry saw our solution working and wanted to buy not just 5-10 units, but hundreds. It also showed that craftsmanship does not scale. We started to grow the team more aggressively, and as we became involved in more projects, we got to know the V2X automotive market. It required a completely different mindset. It was out of the question for Commsignia to produce the electronics for a million cars, so we agreed to provide the software.

The competition here was quite strong. There were companies in Europe working on similar solutions and three strong competitors in the US, but only one of the latter now exists. They all had traction, a bigger team and a market presence. In many cases we have won customers by not compromising on quality. It was hard to learn that in business, the best doesn’t always win, but good product and customer support pays off in the end. 

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Fortunately, many stakeholders have been deploying V2X technologies in the US, EU and all over the globe with the goal of solving safety and efficiency issues on the roads as of today.

What are the challenges facing the company and the industry?a

The challenge for the whole industry and society is the slow pace of V2X deployments. There have been various disruptions. The global economic crises and the Covid pandemic have all had an impact on the uptake of V2X. In addition, road safety has not been as important for end users in the past. When they had to choose between a better audio system or an airbag, they did not choose better safety. This has changed, but the industry still has to find an incentive scheme that helps implement safety improvements. This is a multi-stakeholder game, V2X needs a boost not just from one stakeholder group, like cities or car companies, but from everybody together. Fortunately, many stakeholders have been deploying V2X technologies in the US, EU and all over the globe with the goal of solving safety and efficiency issues on the roads as of today. The outcomes of these deployments show the usefulness of the system and provide hard evidence for future investments in a much broader scale involving micro-mobility players as well.

The US Department of Transportation has recently launched a new initiative involving all industry stakeholders, and we are on track for orders of magnitude larger deployments in the US. All in all, the V2X market is moving ahead with great momentum. I am sure that in the coming decades V2X will become as essential a part of transport as seat belts are now. This is certainly necessary to achieve one of society’s most important goals: efficient transport with zero injuries and deaths.

Gerhard Menzel:
We cannot relax, things are changing very fast in cybersecurity

One hundred years ago this year, radio communication between cars, the ancestor of V2X, was patented for the first time. To mark the occasion, we asked industry experts how they see the present and what they expect from the future of V2X. In this episode, Gerhard Menzel answers our questions, who has been responsible for building up the European security framework of C-ITS at the European Commission and now the Head of Intelligent Transport Systems at the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology in Austria.

Europe is very much at the forefront of C-ITS. How did the EU get here?

When I was first involved with C-ITS it wasn’t even called C-ITS yet. That was in 2007, when the first EU funded research projects in Europe, CVIS and COOPERS aimed to develop safety services based on on-board units that would enable communication with the infrastructure and between vehicles. The use cases that we developed back then were very similar to what we have now. A lot of research activity was going on, and by 2013-2014, when the terms like C-ITS, V2X, V2I and V2V and other similar acronyms were created, we had very good results. The industry wanted to start deploying, but the European Commission saw that a couple of things were not quite ready yet, a lot of things were missing.

The department for mobility and transport (DG MOVE) wanted to create a new form of cooperation between private and public stakeholders to sort out and lay down what needs to be done to make C-ITS a reality.

You’ve been working on the development of security. Were you building on existing solutions?

I had a bit of an idea what the security system was about, how it should work. We didn’t invent anything, the ingredients were already there: the ETSI standards, the communication stack, the PKI concept of having trusted messages, and how it would be done. But it wasn’t the part we focused on. Although the technology was available, it became clear quite quickly that nowhere in the world had a trust model been defined for how to make this really work from an organizational and governance point of view. Any car brand in any country should have been able to communicate with each other and the infrastructure, but there wasn’t any agreement between the car manufacturers and between the member states on how to make C-ITS interoperable.

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It turned out that this wasn’t a task that took one or two months, but more than six years to bring this forward.

What was the most difficult challenge?

Defining a commonly agreed policy on certificates was one of the most difficult tasks. The Commission took on the role of leading the process, but some stakeholders came in with very strong and diverging positions, for instance on security algorithm requirements. In every PKI, the certificate policy must be clearly defined and agreed by all: how many roots there are, who is responsible for them, what the terms are. It didn’t exist yet. We needed a public-private cooperation on this, because otherwise we would have had separate systems in country A and country B, at one car manufacturer and another and so on. This alone took us two years to agree on the certificate policy and write the first version.

This was published by the Commission as results of an expert group and then also in its famous Delegated Regulation on C-ITS, which did not enter into force, but was a very important signal for anyone who would use C-ITS. Regardless of the communications technology debates, it gave certainty on how security works, what the central roles are and that there will be a European PKI maintained. It became clear that we will have more than one root Certificate Authority (CA) in Europe. As a consequence of that, we designed a trust system that ensures that there’s guaranteed interoperability by design between those multiple root CAs. Other regions of the world still don’t have this commitment on how different root CAs will work together.

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Fortunately, many stakeholders have been deploying V2X technologies in the US, EU and all over the globe with the goal of solving safety and efficiency issues on the roads as of today.

These six years also include the scaleup phase, the implementation of these rules. The ECTL, the European Certificate Trust List is published, and more and more stakeholders join. We’re on a consistent path: designing the policy, implementing it, and now scaling it up. Everybody wants to be on the list, be trusted and communicate with the fleet of already V2X equipped cars and deployed road infrastructure units, and hopefully soon with even more other V2X entities.

What challenges still lie ahead for Europe?

Although certainty was there in the trust model, legal certainty was not, but this is about to change. Now the big news is that at the end of October the Council adopted the new ITS Directive, which will come into force in a few weeks. It’s all in there: a very clear legal definition of what C-ITS really is, namely a service based on exchanging secured and trusted messages, who’s the C-ITS certificate policy authority, who’s the trust list manager, who’s the C-ITS point of contact, in fact laying it all down in legislation how trust, interoperability and backward compatibility is guaranteed for all C-ITS deployment in the EU.

As for the challenges: we need to stay up to date, we need to keep reviewing the C-ITS certificate and security policy. We cannot relax, because things are changing very fast in cybersecurity. So, the challenge is not to think that everything is already done, but to keep on maintaining and shaping this now established trusted V2X eco-system.

Martin Böhm: We see C-Roads as the starting point for a new era of mobility

What was the idea that kickstarted C-Roads?

In 2010-2012 everybody was aware that C-ITS has great potential, but we had this chicken or egg dilemma: who’s going to start to deploy? The car industry or the infrastructure owners? At the ITS World Congress in Vienna in 2012, transport ministers from Germany, the Netherlands and Austria agreed to start preparing a C-ITS corridor, and similar discussions have taken place in France and the Nordic countries. We ended up with several roadside deployments, the SCOOP@F project in France, the Nordic Way in the Nordic region, but no interoperability. Everybody was aware that this was not the final solution because we need to provide seamless services to European travelers. We worked together to launch the C-Roads Platform, which brought together and harmonized existing deployment activities to ensure interoperability.

What made it work?

Instead of technology, we started discussing use cases. There are always better and newer technologies ahead, especially in the telecoms sector where mobile networks are now using 5G, tomorrow it will be 6G and then moving towards 7G. The industry has told us many times to wait for the next release because it is much better, but in road safety, we didn’t want to wait. Road authorities have realized that they can invest today and then take steps to improve. In fact, that was the starting point at C-Roads when we started to define use cases to see how we wanted to serve our customers, the travelers, with the technology that was available. We need to improve here and there, and that’s what we’re doing at C-Roads, to further develop use cases by using existing and proven technologies.

The C-Roads Platform now has a stronger focus on urban areas. What’s behind this step?

C-Roads was launched in 2016 to ensure the interoperability of trans-European road transport between several operators and at border crossings. This was the starting point. But – of course – no trip starts and hardly ever ends on motorways, so the next logical step was to cover cities. We started inviting cities in 2019, and now 54 cities are committed to implementing C-ITS and contributing to the work of C-Roads. Within cities, we have recognized that C-ITS has much greater potential than connecting individual cars to each other and to infrastructure. Some cities are already equipping their entire public transport fleet and blue light vehicles with C-ITS for priority services. They see C-ITS not just for individual cars, but also to orchestrate fleets, and that’s something we didn’t foresee at the beginning. Transport operators are investing heavily in C-ITS technologies to connect their fleets to the overall mobility system. It is important that C-ITS does not just mean connectivity, the letter C stands for collaboration.

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Fortunately, many stakeholders have been deploying V2X technologies in the US, EU and all over the globe with the goal of solving safety and efficiency issues on the roads as of today.

How did the first V2X-enabled personal vehicles change the direction of developments?

We were very happy when Volkswagen announced that it would start to equip commercially available vehicles with C-ITS, and it was good to learn that they would start with mass-produced models rather than premium models. There are now a million or more C-ITS-equipped vehicles on European roads. The corona pandemic put a brake on all investments and launches, we had to recover and start again, but now we see that aftermarket systems can be brought to market, so penetration is increasing even further.

The C-ITS infrastructure already recognizes these vehicles and by seeing them, even with such a low penetration rate, we can identify trouble spots and traffic jams. Of course, for us on the infrastructure side, it is still a learning process how to process the data and integrate it into the overall system.

Although the Delegated Act for C-ITS did not pass in 2019, so we don’t have a legal framework, the commitment of infrastructure operators and the automotive industry is still there, so I see things moving in the right direction.

Can you imagine a point in the future when C-ITS coverage will be mandatory for the whole travel network?

First of all, a clear yes. I would like to see the wide range of communication networks available to exchange information between infrastructure and vehicles, but I would not tie the mandatory availability of data to a specific technology. It would be enough to define the functionality that the communication network should provide.

For road managers, the peripheral areas are the blind spots. For example, we hardly know what is happening in very rural areas. The communication network is there. But we want to avoid the road infrastructure operator being responsible for the deployment of 5G. C-ITS services do not require the exchange of large data sets as long as we do not exchange images and videos. We are exchanging map elements, it is a small dataset. So far 4G is good enough, with decent coverage.

When we started, everyone said that C-Roads would never be able to do everything with short range, and I totally agree. That was never our plan, C-Roads supports hybrid communication, both short range as well as long range. In Austria and the Nordic countries, there are motorways that go through really rural areas where there is no need for short range. But in the cities, there are critical junctions where our task is to invest in short-range communication technologies. In rural areas, where there may be safety concerns, it may also be worth investing in short-range technologies. For temporary roadworks and traffic lights, instant direct connectivity makes sense, but that’s about it. The mix of communication technology is very important. Not one or the other, but the intelligent use of both technologies and the synergies of the two.

What was the biggest achievement of the C-Roads platform?

It’s cooperation. We have managed to cooperate, first of all with the different corridors between Germany and France, between the Nordic countries and other regions. We have managed to get cooperation between authorities, which is not usual. We have also achieved cooperation not only with each other, but also with the industry. In the Car 2 Car Consortium, we have a half-day meeting with our technical experts every two weeks.

Until recently, road operators have been responsible for building and maintaining the road, and the car industry has just used it. They complained about the bad roads and the road operator complained about the vehicles that did not obey the rules. They have never sat together to shape the mobility network of the future.

We see C-Roads and C-ITS as the starting point for a new era of mobility. We are working together, public transport and private transport alike, exploring opportunities and synergies together, and designing it to support all of our goals. These may be political goals such as sustainability, safety and efficiency, but also serve the industry’s goals of making money from it. It may not be that the winner takes all, but overall we are helping to ensure that road users win in the end. It is a small paradigm shift that we have achieved, and it is working so far.

The future of micromobility lies in communication

The benefits of light vehicles are attracting more and more people, but the future of micromobility lies in whether cities are able to protect vulnerable road users (VRUs).

Some have switched modes with confidence, but many do not feel comfortable in the current state of transition. Standing on a sheet of metal is not comparable to the safety of a car body.

There is a significant increase in the risk of unintentional road injuries and fatalities

Some cities already have an extensive network of bicycle roads, some are planning to build, others are lagging behind. Whatever the case, people traveling by bicycle or e-scooter will encounter cars during their journey. In the battle of standing on two legs vs two tons of steel, there is no doubt who will be the winner.

There’s a way to increase safety and confidence in diverse traffic. We need to connect all road users with vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology. Commsignia brought its expertise in V2X and partnered with Spoke to build game-changer  VRU safety solutions.

One of the most common causes of VRU incidents is that the driver of the car doesn’t see the light vehicle coming.

A bicycle or e-scooter can easily go unnoticed in the vehicle’s blind spot. Turning cars can cross the path of a light vehicle passing by them or in the opposite lane, which can lead to an incident with injury. Even an ordinary event like the opening of a car door can also have serious consequences.

Real time V2X communication guarantees that vehicles nearby receive real-time alerts. They will know about each other, even if they don’t see each other, and they can avoid these dangerous situations.

Find out more about the future of micromobility and our VRU protection and bicycle safety solutions by contacting us here.

Speaking V2X – the language of mobility

If anything, we at Commsignia speak V2X – the language of mobility.

“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”

Rita Mae Brown

It’s easy to take a popular quote out of context and use them in wide variety of topics. These words by Rita Mae Brown have a very different meaning in the business of vehicle communications. We literally use V2X messages to tell where people and their vehicles come from, and where they are going.

How is V2X a language?

Now let’s get to the point. V2X has it’s own mother language defined by international standards, so every single vehicle understands each other. Although we don’t use linguistic prefixes or suffixes, the messages are well structured. Would you like to see one? Fasten your seat belt because we are going fast and very deep.

Take a look below at the beautiful structure of the standard V2X “sentence”, a Traveler Information Message (TIM) that typically contains information about actual traffic situations.

{
  "dtype": "TIM",
  "decodedMessageData": {
    "travelerInformation": {
      "msgCnt": 1,
      "timeStamp": 381239,
      "dataFrames": [
        {
          "sspTimRights": 0,
          "frameType": "advisory",
          "msgId": {
            "choiceID": 1,
            "roadSignID": {
              "position": {
                "lat": 474751745,
                "long_": 190578618
              },
              "viewAngle": {
                "bytes": "//8=",
                "unusedBits": "0",
                "from292_5to315_0degrees": true,
                "from315_0to337_5degrees": true,
                "from112_5to135_0degrees": true,
                "from135_0to157_5degrees": true,
                "from157_5to180_0degrees": true,
                "from202_5to225_0degrees": true,
                "from225_0to247_5degrees": true,
                "from022_5to045_0degrees": true,
                "from045_0to067_5degrees": true,
                "from090_0to112_5degrees": true,
                "from270_0to292_5degrees": true,
                "from247_5to270_0degrees": true,
                "from337_5to360_0degrees": true,
                "from067_5to090_0degrees": true,
                "from180_0to202_5degrees": true,
                "from000_0to022_5degrees": true,
                "bitSize": 16
              }
            }
          },
          "startTime": 73440,
          "duratonTime": 480,
          "priority": 3,
          "sspLocationRights": 0,
          "regions": [
            {
              "anchor": {
                "lat": 474753846,
                "long_": 190575238
              },
              "description": {
                "path": {
                  "offset": {
                    "xy": {
                      "nodes": [
                        {
                          "delta": {
                            "choiceID": 6,
                            "node_LatLon": {
                              "lat": 474753846,
                              "lon": 190575238
                            }
                          }
                        },
                        {
                          "delta": {
                            "choiceID": 6,
                            "node_LatLon": {
                              "lat": 474754975,
                              "lon": 190577181
                            }
                          }
                        },
                        {
                          "delta": {
                            "choiceID": 6,
                            "node_LatLon": {
                              "lat": 474751456,
                              "lon": 190582348
                            }
                          }
                        },
                        {
                          "delta": {
                            "choiceID": 6,
                            "node_LatLon": {
                              "lat": 474749460,
                              "lon": 190578308
                            }
                          }
                        },
                        {
                          "delta": {
                            "choiceID": 6,
                            "node_LatLon": {
                              "lat": 474753872,
                              "lon": 190575160
                            }
                          }
                        }
                      ]
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          ],
          "sspMsgRights1": 0,
          "sspMsgRights2": 0,
          "content": {
            "choiceID": 1,
            "workZone": [
              {
                "item": {
                  "choiceID": 0,
                  "itis": 6952
                }
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Let’s take a look at the details! Geographical coordinates are easily recognizable, they describe our engineering office in Budapest, Hungary. The start time is from the beginning of the year, from 0:00 a.m. on January 1, 2022, and is, at least officially, 8 hours a day. These values we have to input in minutes.

You can also see the “workZone” expression in the text. It usually describes an event on the road, but we are also proud to work on those roads: using our software to make them safer. Our free interpretation is not a problem at all. The ITIS code 6952 of the event only states: look-out-for-workers.

We could call ITIS codes the words and syllables of the V2X language. The codes are issued by an international body, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). SAE plays a key role in V2X standardization, without which communication between vehicles would hardly work.

Here at Commsignia we speak V2X on a native level and are happy to translate your everyday traffic problem into the language of mobility. Get in touch!

Level 3 autonomous driving coming soon – and how V2X comes into the picture

Mercedes takes a big step forward in self driving by being the first to receive a regulatory approval for Level 3 autonomous driving. Upcoming models with enhanced self-driving functions will rely on various sensors. LiDARs, radars and cameras will help cars navigate the streets autonomously with speeds up to 60 km/hour.

News articles focus on how drivers will benefit from autonomous systems, and that’s okay. The improvement truly changes the way we can work or have more fun in vehicles. But Commsignia is all about road safety, and we have found other interesting pieces in the details. 

It’s good to see how an OEM ensures failsafe operation. When self-driving conditions aren’t met, and the driver is not ready to take back control of the vehicle, the cars will safely stop, put on the hazard lights and activate an emergency call. That’s one of the moments in traffic when Vehicle-to-Everything or V2X communication solutions can come handy.

So where does V2X come into the picture?

With integrated V2X, cars can send a warning to other vehicles nearby: Hey, watch out, there’s a stopped vehicle on the road! Of course the message drivers see or hear won’t exactly sound like this, it’s up to the OEMs to find the best way to alert drivers.

How does the evolution of V2X compare to the evolution of self-driving? And where exactly is level 3 autonomous driving in relation to complete autonomy?

Take a look at this chart below to find out more:

As you can see, cooperation and automation evolve in parallel. We are at the point when deployed V2X systems can share sensor data with each other, allowing us to use improved safety services in vehicles. We’ve been working on the next level of cooperation for a while. Commsignia is actively participating in the standardization of Cooperative Perception, and not only for cars. 

Cooperative Perception is an integral part of how street sensors and cameras can share information with vehicles. This is essential to include the otherwise non-connected vulnerable road users, pedestrians and people riding bicycles or electric kickscooters in the V2X ecosystem.

iPhones love V2X and make pedestrian safety easy

Some say that a mobile phone provides a great opportunity to improve pedestrian safety. We can also argue the mobile phones cause dangerous situations on the streets, with drivers or pedestrians watching the display instead of the environment. It is certain that the development of digital communication between motorists and pedestrians requires great care so that it doesn’t become a distraction from a solution that seeks to increase safety.

This connection can be built up gradually, and smartphones that support Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology provide an excellent opportunity for this. Apple iPhones have UWB, and Commsignia has a neat solution built on that. 

UWB acts as a sensor

In road safety, the most important thing is to know where the traffic participants are and where they are going. UWB provides exactly what we need: the position of the user with an accuracy down to just a few centimeters. For reference, other technologies offer accuracy of few meters. UWB devices forward data to our Roadside Unit – or shortly RSU – which converts this information to standard V2X messages. These messages are understood by V2X on-board devices of vehicles, and appropriate actions can be taken before accidents occur.

This way we don’t have to deal with the user’s distraction, making pedestrian safety something more accessible to all. Smartphones can even stay in the pocket, and we only use UWB to determine the presence of the pedestrian. Our V2X roadside unit can also fuse data from multiple sources, so UWB can increase the reliability of pedestrian detection in various scenarios. This is especially helpful in avoiding false alarms.

Find out more about our VRU protection and pedestrian safety solutions by contacting us here.