Secure mobile platform for intelligent transportation systems

Abstract

The number of vehicles around the world has increased a lot during the last decades and will continue to grow in the next years. This factor is closely related to the increase of air pollution, traffic congestion and road non-safety. Due to this, the automotive industry and research entities have put lots of efforts in exploring the potential of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). These efforts have been focused on trying to add ITS systems to the new cars of the future. The present work describes a proposal for taking advantage of ITS possibilities using the vehicles that are nowadays on our roads. In particular, the described platform is mainly based on smartphones, but also on sensors and servers. The proposal is based on a hybrid scheme that combines an online mode using the Internet access of the smartphone, with an offline mode using wireless technologies such as WiFi Direct and Bluetooth Low Energy to define various ITS applications related with traffic collisions, violations, jams, signs and lights, and parking management. The described system has been developed for the Android platform, producing promising results.