QMIC’s Connected Vehicles Platform Tested Successfully at a Global Industry Event in The Netherlands

Doha, April 6th 2015: The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) at the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) has successfully participated in this year’s Cooperative Mobility Services (CMS) Interoperability Testing (Plugtest™) event, for the fourth consecutive year. This event was organized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), in partnership with ERTICO-ITS Europe, from 17th to 27th March 2015, hosted by TASS International in Helmond, Netherlands.

Nearly one hundred experts, from over forty organizations have come together, from all over the world, to test the interoperability of the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) systems known also as Connected Vehicles. Connected Vehicles will change intelligent transportation as we know it by enabling wireless communication among vehicles and infrastructure in a seamless manner and using a common standard or language. This will enable the realization of next generation Road Safety Systems and is considered a key enabler for future autonomous and self-driving vehicles. Studies by the US Department of Transportation shows that Connected Vehicles, if fully implemented, could mitigate up to 80% of road accidents. In the past, the main focus has been on how to survive accidents; Connected Vehicles aims to avoid them completely, as well as enhancing our daily driving experience, as a whole.

To demonstrate its progress in developing connected vehicles platforms and applications, in April 2014, QMIC held the first Connected Vehicles field demo in the Middle East and North Africa region at the campus of the Qatar Science and Technology Park. The event was attended by VIPs from government, industry, research and academic sectors in Qatar, showing them first hand how this technology works. Since then, the QMIC R&D team has added more features and capabilities to its platform that allowed it to successfully participate in this year’s plugtests event.

Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director (CEO) of QMIC said, “Connected Vehicle (V2X) Technologies represent a key element of QMIC’s leading and integrated road safety innovations portfolio. It nicely complements our leading Masarak traffic and telematics platform and our Salamtek distracted driving solutions. Our successful participation in the recent plugtests event solidifies our regional leadership position in this emerging area. We look forward to working with leading national entities in Qatar to support our vision of making Qatar one of the leading nations in deploying V2X systems in order to realize the significant road safety and driving convenience benefits”.

The QMIC team was led by Dr. Hamid Menouar, Product Manager of the Connected Vehicle program and R&D Expert represented QMIC in this event. QMIC’s Connected Vehicles platform has been successfully tested against platforms of other international organizations who participated in the event which helps QMIC to put its platform at a competitive international position. In addition, this intensive testing also provides an early chance to validate the conformance against the first release of the ETSI TC ITS standards. Such testing events are necessary not only to enhance the quality of standards prior to deployment, but also to reduce the time to market, and to support the early deployment of the technology.

After three successful CMS Plugtests events in the past years, the ETSI TC ITS standards have matured significantly allowing more complex features to be tested in this year CMS Plugtests. To demonstrate the level of progress and maturity of standards, the total number of planned test cases reached 340 in this year event compared to only 49 test cases in last year’s event. There was also a notable growth in participants this year as well. The number of organizations participating this year doubled in comparison to last year’s attendance which reflects the expanding global interest in the development and deployment of V2X systems.

About QMIC:

The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), located at the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), is the first independent regional innovations center that was created to leverage the use of emerging mobility technologies and lifestyle in developing and deploying intelligent solutions and smart applications for use in a number of markets including Transportation, Road Safety, Environment, and Smart City Platforms. QMIC was founded with the objective of filling the existing gap in the region for institutions focusing on applied research and solutions delivery with the aim of creating local knowledge-based ventures.

For further information please contact:

[email protected], +974 44592702