News

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting and Final Review,
15.-16. September 2008, Stuttgart, Germany

The WATCH-OVER Project has ended in December 2008. Therefore the final WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting as well as the Final Review were held on December 15th & 16th 2008 at the premises of the University of Stuttgart, Germany. The WATCH-OVER project is now successfully completed, all tasks were finalised and approved at the Project Plenary Meeting.

The Final Review was held on December 16th, where the WATCH-OVER project results were introduced in form of different demonstrators and live demontstration of the developed system. The WATCH-OVER project results were greatly approved by the European Commission and the project reviewers.

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 23.-24. September 2008, Ulm, Germany

The eighth WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting will be held on September 23th & 24th 2008 at Daimler AG in Ulm, Germany. As WATCH-OVER approaches the project's end, the upcoming meeting is considered crucial for the finalisation phase of the WATCH-OVER research. Thus, the meeting will mainly focus on the technical activities of WP 5 "System Development" and WP 6 "Cooperative System Test and Validation" in order to conclude the technical system development. Another focal point will be work package 4 "Communication and Sensing Technologies". Additionally a report on the current project management will be given as well as an outlook on the ongoing dissemination activities.

Introduction of two WATCH-OVER demonstrator cars at the IV’08

WATCH-OVER presented two demonstrators cars on the 2008 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV’08) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Daimler presented the latest system for real-time vision-based pedestrian detection from a moving vehicle. The demonstration was conducted with real pedestrians on the test rack and also in real urban traffic. The University of Chemnitz provided a live demonstration of a pedestrian recognition system using a near infrared camera.

The demonstrations of the two cars gathered a wide feed-back and were closely followed by the public eye. Thus, the DAIMLER demonstrator was featured in the Dutch National TV (NOS) eight o'clock evening news as well as in several radio and TV features, e.g. Noorderlicht radio and TV, Brabant local TV and in the morning news of NOS radio.

Have a look at the IV'08 demonstration sheet: Daimler / TUC

WATCH-OVER at the 2008 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV’08)

The 2008 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV’08), which is an annual forum sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transport Systems Society, will take place in Eindhoven, the Netherlands during June 4-6, 2008.

The Intelligent Vehicles Conference gathers researchers from industry, universities and public authorities to discuss research and applications for intelligent vehicles, including the communication between vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructure. This year WATCH-OVER project participates at the Intelligent Vehicles Symposium with two vehicle demonstrations on pedestrian detection by DAIMLER and the University of Chemnitz.

Have a look at the IV'08 demonstrations

NVVC 2008 - A Safer Traffic for Everybody?

On April 24, 2008, the National Traffic Safety conference took place in Doelen Rotterdam, Netherlands. On this conference the Dutch minister of Transport Camiel Eurlings presented the number of fatalities of 2007 and his plans to improve the traffic safety in the Netherlands.

In the panel session that followed, Mr Camiel Eurlings was assisted by the director of the Dutch Automobile Club Guido van Woerkom and the formal minister of transport Karla Peijs. In the session it was discussed how the new goals for 2010 and 2020 should be set, so that they are realistic and able to be implemented.

WATCH-OVER, presented by Logica CMG, was introduced as one of the new innovations which help to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries for Vulnerable Road Users. The poster received a lot of positive reactions and in particular the interest of the “Fietsersbond”, which is the Dutch Cyclist Organization.

The complete programme can be found here: NVVC programme

WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT User Forum Workshop
"Cooperative Systems for Road Safety"

The joint WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT User Forum workshop took place on January 21st and 22nd at the premises of the University of Stuttgart, Germany. The workshop brought together stakeholders in the area of the cooperative safety (V2V and V2I) including the special role of vulnerable road users (VRU) and created an opportunity where the WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT concepts and developments were discussed, reviewed and updated.

The workshop’s program included presentations by key experts both of the projects’ consortia and of external attendees, such as the European Commission and EUCAR as well as interactive working groups involving all interested participants.

With approximately 120 participants the workshop has been a great success.

Please click here for more information and downloads!

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 22.-23. January 2008, Stuttgart, Germany

The seventh WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting will be held on January 22nd & 23rd 2008 at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. The meeting is held subsequent to the joint WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT User Forum workshop and will focus on ongoing activities of the WATCH-OVER project. Another focal point will be the outlook on upcoming work packages with a short introduction of the next tasks, which will be presented by the specific WP leaders. Additionally a report on the ongoing project management will be given.

WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT User Forum Workshop
"Cooperative Systems for Road Safety" Pre-announcement

The joint WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT User Forum workshop will take place on January 21st (full day) and 22nd (half day) at the premises of the University of Stuttgart. The workshop aims to bring together all stakeholders in the area of the cooperative safety (V2V and V2I) including the special role of vulnerable road users (VRU) and to create an opportunity where WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT concepts and developments will be discussed, reviewed and updated. In addition both projects will be able to gain form this workshop valuable input in terms of user needs, acceptance but also innovative ideas to be taken into account at WATCH-OVER and SAFESPOT design and development cycle.

The workshop is being organised by USTUTT with the support of the dissemination managers and co-ordinators of the two projects.

See pre-announcement for more detailed information!

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 13.-14. September 2007, Torino, Italy

The sixth WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting will be held on September 13th & 14th 2007 at Centro Ricerche FIAT in Torino, Italy. The meeting will mainly focus on the technical activities of WP 3 "Overall System Specification" and WP 4 "Communication Sensing Technologies". Another focal point will be the outlook on work packages 5 and 6 with a short introduction of the upcoming tasks, which will be presented by the specific WP leaders. Additionally a report on the ongoing project management will be given.

Call for Abstracts for the TRA Conference 2008

The TRA 2008's Program Committee and the TRA 2008 organisers, the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR), the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) and the European Commission would like to remind you that final deadline for submission of abstracts is July 1st, 2007.

Then, if you have not done it yet, we are inviting you again to revisit the web page www.traconference.com select appropriate topics and submit the abstract(s). All good and relevant ones will be selected for full paper submission and will be published in the proceedings. The best contributions will be presented in technical, strategic or interactive (poster) sessions.

Abstracts can be submitted electronically through the TRA 2008 web site, which gives detailed instructions about the submission procedure. As TRA 2008 intends to cover all aspects of road transport research and innovation, we are hoping for your contribution to make the conference even more interesting and successful.

We look forward to meet you in Ljubljana in April 2008.

WATCH-OVER to the ITS Europe 2007

The WATCH-OVER Project will be presented at the 6th European Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS’07) that will be held in Aalborg, Denmark on June 18th-20th 2007. The presentation, published by Luisa Andreone from CRF and Federico Galliano from Piaggio, will be held in Session SS18 "Applications of cooperative systems. The session will be chaired by André Vits form the European Commission DG INFSO.

For more information on the event visit: www.itsineurope.com

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 14.-15. May 2007, Reggio Emilia, Italy

The fifth WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting was held on May 14th & 15th 2007 at the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The meeting mainly focussed on the technical activities of WP 3 "Overall System Specification" and WP 4 "Communication Sensing Technologies". Another focal point was the outlook on work packages 5 and 6 with a short introduction of the upcoming tasks, which were presented by the specific WP leaders. Additionally a report on the ongoing project management was given.

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 15.-16. January 2007, Vienna, Austria

The fourth WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting was held on January 15th & 16th 2007 at the Austrian Research Centers GmbH in Vienna. The meeting mainly focussed on the technical activities of WP 3 "Overall System Specification" and WP 4 "Communication Sensing Technologies". Other topics were of course the activities of the project management and of the remaining Work Packages, each presented by the specific WP leaders.

EUCAR Conference 2006, 22.-23. November, Brussels, Belgium

The EUCAR 2006 Reception and Conference took place on 22nd and 23rd November 2006 in Autoworld facilities in Brussels.

The theme of this year's conference was 'R&D for Europe', with a focus on safety and mobility, energy and environment, design and protection for the automotive and road transport sectors. To get an overview on the different sessions of the EUCAR Conference have a look at the official Conference Programme

On this year's EUCAR conference the WATCH-OVER system will be presented with a poster

More information at www.eucar.be

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 16.-17. October 2006, Nuneaton, UK

The third WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting was held on October 16th & 17th 2006 at MIRA Ltd. in Nuneaton. The meeting mainly focussed on the technical activities of WP 3 "Overall System Specification" and WP 4 "Communication Sensing Technologies". Other topics were of course the activities of the project management and of the remaining Work Packages, each presented by the specific WP leaders.

Concertation meeting in "ICT for transport"

FP6 ICT for Transport Concertation Meeting was held in Leuven, Belgium on 5-6 July 2006

The main purpose of this meeting was to provide a forum to introduce previous experiences on common architectures in the IST projects and to continue the concertation efforts started from the first Call. This concertation meeting was mainly concentrated on communication architecture and the expectations to create a momentum for a common European architecture for cooperative systems. As a result a number of actions for the follow-up of the Concertation Meeting were drawn, in particular projects have to work together on the requirements side, as the common architecture has to support all communications needs.

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting, 3.-4. July 2006, Rijswijk, The Netherlands

The second WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting was held on July 3rd & 4th 2006 at Logica CMG Nederland B.V. in Rijswijk. The first day of the meeting included plenary and keynote presentations held by the project management. The second day focussed more on the activities of the different Work Packages presented by the specific WP leaders.

Following the Project Plenary Meeting the second Communication Technologies Meeting was held on July 5th 2006 in Rotterdam. On this meeting a number of issues regarding the technologies planned to be used for the WATCH-OVER project was discussed.

WATCH-OVER user needs survey

WATCH-OVER is performing a survey of users' needs regarding a system, which will monitor the traffic environment and will detect possibly dangerous situations, involving vulnerable road users, like pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists. In order to develop a highly efficient and acceptable system an on-line questionnaire was developed, which tried to collect information about users' preferences for HMI modalities, the level of support requested per scenario, the type of support preferred and the willingness to have and use such a system.

The questionnaire is now completed and the analysis of the data will be done. We will inform you about the results any time soon.

We thank all participants for their support. Your answers will greatly help us in developing an optimum system, which may in the future help in the prevention of road accidents.

Transport Research Arena (TRA) Europe 2006

The Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2006 Conference took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 12th to 15th of June 2006 around the theme "Cleaner, safer and smarter road transport for Europe". TRA 2006 focussed on the implementation of the European Research Area in support of a sustainable, safer and more efficient road transport system in Europe. The objective of the conference was to promote the strategic alignment of road transport research, bringing together all European road research stakeholders around a shared 'Strategic Research Agenda' (SRA).

The event was organised jointly by the European Commission, ERTRAC (European Road Transport Research Advisory Council) and CEDR (Conference of European Directors of Roads). The Transport Research Arena is designed as a continuing series of conferences to take place every other year.
More information at www.traconference.com

13th ITS World Congress, 8.-12. October, London, UK

The ITS World and European Congresses provide the ideal opportunity for all players to come together and make the necessary contacts to move initiatives forward. Over the years, they have also received the highest support throughout the ITS world from government, industry and other organisations. The event will attract decision makers, opinion formers, policy makers, leading experts, technical specialists and many others from both the private and public sectors who are concerned with the development, deployment and support of Intelligent Transport Systems and Services.

The ITS World Congress is organised by ERTICO in co-operation with ITS United Kingdom, Department for Transport, Department of Trade and Industry and Transport for London. It is part of the highly successful ongoing series of ITS World and European Congresses. These events have received the highest support throughout the ITS world in government, industry and other organisations and continue to do so in this rapidly growing field.
More information at www.itsworldcongress.com

On this year's ITS World Congress the idea of WATCH-OVER project was presented by CRF. For more information have a look at the abstract of the presentation:
Cooperative System For Vulnerable Road User: The Concept of the WATCH-OVER Project

WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting & Workshop, 3.-5. April 2006, Leonberg, Germany

The WATCH-OVER Project Plenary Meeting was held on April 3rd & 4th 2006 at Robert Bosch GmbH, Leonberg. The first day of the meeting included plenary and keynote presentations with the participation of all partners. The second day focussed more on the activities of the different Work Packages presented by the specific WP leaders. Following the Project Plenary Meeting the first WATCH-OVER Workshop was held on April 5th 2006. This first workshop discussed a number of issues regarding user requirements, scenarios of use and use cases.

Europe's Intelligent Cars

The Intelligent Car Launching Event in Brussels was a chance to check out the latest developments in vehicle safety. According to the European Union, such systems might be able to prevent at least the nine percent of all fatal accidents only in the next 5 years.
More information at www.escope.info

Launch of the new WATCH-OVER project website

The WATCH-OVER project website is now online. On this platform we inform you about the current WATCH-OVER project activities, upcoming events and the cutting-edge news.

WATCH-OVER Kick-off meeting, 11. January 2006, Torino, Italy

The Kick-off meeting of the WATCH-OVER project in Torino on Jan. 11th marked the start of the project activities. Supported by the EC and under the leadership of Centro Ricerche Fiat this three-year project involves different partners from the public and private sector. WATCH-OVER will develop, test and evaluate safety-related applications, using already existing advanced sensors and communications devices integrated into on-board systems for driver assistance and furthermore using devices inserted in wearable objects like helmets, watches or shoes. In short, WATCH-OVER will help drivers to avoid accidents. Have a look at the 1st deliverable and learn more about the WATCH-OVER project.