Queensland seeks volunteers for Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot

The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) in Australia is seeking volunteers to get their vehicles retrofitted with cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) technologies for the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot project.

The latest move forms the next stage of TMR’s pilot, which is the largest trial of connected vehicles in the country.

The pilot serves as a key element of V2X technology development in Australia, a focus area for telecommunications company Telstra.

Telstra is a foundation member of the executive steering committee for the Australian and New Zealand Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI), which supports the acceleration of safe driverless vehicles onto roads.

As part of the initiative, Telstra is set to supply 4G LTE data connectivity for the more than 500 vehicles that will participate in the trial. It will also supply the equipment to operate roadside communications network devices.

In a statement, Telstra said: “As the nine-month Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot kicks off, we will see around 500 connected vehicles exchanging messages with the road network infrastructure systems, in order to alert the driver to potentially hazardous situations.

“Data will be collected during the trial and will be analysed to derive insights and learnings into the safety benefits of C-ITS, to better inform future decisions about regulation, standards and technology to enable the successful deployment of connected vehicles on Australian roads.”

Last year, the company partnered with Lexus Australia for the Advanced Connected Vehicles Victoria (ACV2) trial of cellular V2X technology for different road safety uses.

In July 2017, a trial of Vehicle-to-Pedestrian technology in South Australia was conducted using the mobile network.

As estimated by Infrastructure Australia, reducing road congestion and improving road network efficiency has an economic benefit.