Q-Free announced as finalists for the 13th ITS Australia Awards

Q-Free Australia has been shortlisted as a finalist for the @ITS Australia Awards in the Connected and Automated Vehicle category. The project is titled Enabling Emergency Service V2V Communication for Safety Applications in Australia and was delivered with Q-Free´s partners; Lexus Australia, Ambulance Victoria and Australia Integrated MultiModal Ecosystem (AIMES).

“Gridlocks costs lives as ambulances stuck in traffic face delays in the race against the clock to reach accident areas and hospitals. Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) meets these challenges by enabling emergency service vehicles to share awareness messages with surrounding vehicles, request priority at signalized intersections, and consume event notification and information messages.”, explains Silje Troseth, VP APMEA and General Manager at Q-Free Australia.

“Development of this technology aims to minimize emergency vehicle response time and improve safety and suits perfectly well within our Q-Safe approach and programme.”

The real-world testing with collaborators including Lexus, Ambulance Victoria, and AIMES increases the broader Intelligent Transport Systems conversation in Australia and builds C-ITS expertise across industries. The Emergency Service Vehicle Notification C-ITS addresses the following areas:

• Improvement of situational awareness for road users of any emergency vehicle in the vicinity;
• directional-based alerts to contextualise the situational awareness; and
• warning of stationary or slow-moving emergency service vehicles and providing recommended actions such as a reduced target speed, in accordance with local regulations.

Based on C-ITS standards and Emergency Service Vehicle Notification specifications, Q-Free Australia developed the software and provided vehicle-mounted hardware devices to perform real-world testing, with integration to ambulances including light bars and sirens, and to standard road vehicles including human-machine interface (HMI) with display and audio. The software was developed using sophisticated Geographic Information System (GIS) simulations prior to real-world testing using Q-Free provided C-ITS hardware.

Testing with vehicles in a controlled environment provided the necessary feedback to improve the system prior to real-world testing in the AIMES precinct. The successful demonstration of the use case showed a significant increase in situational awareness amongst the vehicle drivers. The visual and audio warnings provided timely contextual information to the driver. The driver had accurate information about the approaching ambulance based on the presented alert and responded appropriately. The cases demonstrated effective communication between vehicles, which resulted in a safer and more efficient working environment for emergency services.

“Q-Free has leading global expertise within C-ITS and this project is another example on how our technology creates societal value.”, says Silje.