Welcome to S-CICLO Project

The safety improvement in roads has been a key objective within national and international policies. Up to now measures have impacted on the reduction of accidents in common vehicles, but statistics reveal that we need further mechanisms to follow up with this trend in the field of vulnerable road users, since the mortality of pedestrians, motorcyclists and, above all, cyclists and moped users has not diminished in the say way. There are even some indicators of the increment in the number of injuries in this area. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) provide new technologies to improve both driver and occupant safety, and they imply a progress in the travel experience. In cooperative ITS, computer networks allow vehicle on-board systems to communicate among them and with the infrastructure, paving the way for a new set of services such as emergency call (e-Call), cooperative collision warning or road incidence notifications. Cooperative ITS presents a perfect frame to solve the road safety issue in the area of vulnerable road users, since they offer the needed advances to integrate cyclists and motorcyclists in the future smart cities and roads.

The project S-CICLO, which stands for "Cooperative ITS Systems for Two-Wheel Vulnerable Road Users", aims at integrating motorbikes and, above all, bikes and mopeds, within ITS networks being standardized by ISO/ETSI, which are in development progress for the case of common vehicles. In this way, the project provides a framework to deploy novel (safety) services from the vulnerable road user viewpoint, on one side, and the integration of this group within the existent set of cooperative services for common vehicles. The work carried out in this area is limited until now, and bikes and mopeds are a new scenario where hardware integration, power constrains and human-machine interface should be carefully considered. The usage of the IEEE 802.11p communication technology is essential in the project to allow these means of transport to emit and receive data in the vehicular communication channel. By using this technology it is possible to create a virtual context where to set up safety and efficiency services.

The tasks of S-CICLO are covered following an incremental model, which set the basis on a thorough scientific review to later design and implement an embedded system especially adapted for bicycle and moped users. The communication middleware takes the ISO/ETSI communication stack as reference, which the support of IEEE 802.11p, and it integrates IETF technologies based on IPv6. This technology allows the interconnection with vehicles and infrastructure, and benefit the integration of these users in the Future Internet, considering the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Citiy paradigms. The project includes a reference development of a software/hardware unit for two-wheel vehicles, and integrates previous advances in the area of on-board and infrastructure units in the projects ITSSv6 and FOTsis. These prototypes serve to monitor the traffic environment by means of standardized messaging and then implement a safety service for vulnerable road users.

Reference project number: SPIP2015-01757