SafeTRIP - interactive satellite services for automotive applications and road safety

The acronym SafeTRIP stands for "Satellite Application for Emergency handling, Traffic alerts, Road safety and Incident Prevention". Being a European (FP7) project, it brings together 20 partners from seven countries having the common goal of improving road safety, mobility, and environmental protection for all kinds of passenger vehicles. The general objective of the SafeTRIP project is to improve the use of road transport infrastructures and to improve the alert chain (information/prevention/intervention) in case of incidents by offering an integrated system from data collection to service provision. SafeTRIP directly contributes to the achievement of the European Commission's objectives regarding road transport safety and road mortality reduction. The SafeTRIP system basically is an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) aiming at the combination of digital broadcasting technology with satellite and complementary communication channels to enable novel bi-directional service offerings to the automotive user with pan-European coverage. The satellite will provide seamless coverage for mobile reception whereas the terrestrial components are mainly used to increase the high system capacity in areas with many users or it will increase the quality of service (QoS) in areas with limited satellite coverage. The SafeTRIP project focuses on the test of the core technologies for different applications and usage scenarios. An open architecture is created allowing the development of innovative applications by leveraging a set of enabling services. The demonstrator will support communication via a real satellite, corresponding ground stations or other 3G/4G infrastructure, an on-board unit and end-to-end applications to evaluate the benefits of the architecture and the applications during a trial phase.