The Michigan VII developmental test environment or DTE for proof of concept (POC) of several applications officially started in November 2007. “However, prior to that, there was almost two years of work going on with the consortium in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Transportation,” Dave Henry, president, VII Consortium & senior manager, Chrysler LLC., noted.

Supported by nine major OEMs (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nissan, Volkswagen, Honda, and Toyota), the test fleet consisted of 25 vehicles with four different makes. An On-Board Equipment (OBE) module, a 5.9 GHz Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) radio with Linux drivers and an antenna were integrated in each vehicle with CAN access and a display. Prototype applications developed to exercise the network include probe data collection, off-board navigation, in-vehicle signage and payment applications. Figure 1 shows the VII concept.

“As we were developing the equipment and then integrating the equipment into the vehicles, the US DOT through its contractor Booz Allen, was also creating the RSUs or roadside units,” said Henry. “We now have equipped vehicles as well as what we call the DTE or the developmental test environment.” The DTE is basically a roadway in the Novi, MI area that is equipped with roadside units that cover an area of about 45 square miles and 75 miles of roadway. With the DTE in Michigan and vehicles with the integrated equipment, in November 2007, carmakers were ready to start proof-of-concept testing. Figure 2 shows the location of the RSE units northwest of Detroit.

The executive leadership team, the decision-making body of The VII National Coalition, made up of the VII consortium that represents the automakers, the state and local departments of transportation, as well as the DOT, met in May to discuss the results of the testing to date. With results and a plan to move forward, Henry presented the status of the VII testing at Telematics Update 2008^[4]. “I reported that the executive leadership team did agree to continue work on the VII concept, thus passing through the first milestone, which was the viability assessment decision,” he said. While requesting continued investment in VII, the team proposed an accelerated effort in describing the business deployment, security and governance alternatives for VII.

“I think we have kind of proven the technical feasibility, although we are not done, a lot of scalability work has to be done, but I think we are proving that the concept is a viable one to pursue,” said Henry. “One of the things that we have to begin a lot of good work on is the business model and infrastructure governance framework.” Next steps from the technology perspective will be more field operation testing, some of it collaborative, some by individual automakers.

As part of the preliminary conclusions, the cited observations and findings include successfully sending and receiving vehicle “heartbeat” messages among multiple vehicles. While early tests indicate that the system supports transmission of signal phase and timing and intersection maps, message priority testing has not yet been completed. However, the preliminary conclusion is that V2V safety applications can be supported. Also, pending the completion of tests to determine prioritization of safety messages, applications such as cooperative intersection collision avoidance systems can be supported.

Initial findings in specific applications include^[4]:

• Heartbeat messages can be exchanged between moving vehicles.
• Safety link messages can be wirelessly communicated to vehicles.
• Probe data can be wirelessly collected by DSRC and can be subscribed to through the network.
• Signage messages can be wirelessly pushed to the vehicles and displayed.
• Large files such as those required for Off Board Navigation can be communicated across the non- contiguous network.
• Electronic payments can be conducted at speed.

VII's leadership team came to the initial conclusion that DSRC wireless communication together with the POC network architecture can serve diverse applications required for safety, mobility and commercial applications. However, some wireless experts believe the protocol used in the current POC testing is inadequate for real-time safety — one of the major applications unique to DSRC.