The newly established "Smartway / intelligent road" scheme which promises to make better use of the leading edge ITS technology is expected to bolster road infrastructure in Japan. A barrier to this development is unconformity in the definition for communication protocols and messages used to exchange data, which consumes considerable time and cost. The development of road communication standards has been underway since November 1997 to work out this problem by ensuring interchangeability and interoperability between devices and relevant information, as well as facilitating common use and alleviating the work of system designing. This paper describes the findings and outcome of the study focusing on three critical elements: data dictionary, message set and communication protocol. (A*)
Abstract