IT Convergence Technology Research Laboratory

areas for Research & Development

  Study on Vehicle convergence platform technology

We now focus on two technical areas in automotive industry: Software platform and functional safety.
Recently global competition in automotive area is hard and continuously growing and driven by the advent of innovative vehicle applications, contemporary automotive E/E architecture has reached a level of complexity which requires a technological breakthrough in order to manage it satisfactorily and fulfill the heightened passenger and legal requirements. To cope with this industry-wide challenge, leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers decided to work together. Thus AUTOSAR(Automotive Open System Architecture) has been formed with the catch phrase of "Cooperate on standards, compete on implementation".

We are under development of a basic software platform(AutoWorks-Platform) and development tool chains(AutoWorks-developer) based on the AUTOSAR release 3.0. AutoWorks-Platform consists of basic softwares modules defined in the AUTOSAR specification, which serve commonly required services, for instance, resource management, communication, diagnostics, scheduling, runtime environment, in plain words, play roles like as middleware and operating system on PC.

AutoWorks-developer assists automotive developers by supporting the development process of AUTOSAR methodology such as system configuration, ECU configuration , implementation, generation of runtime environment and etc.

Another research area is automotive functional safety. Nowadays road vehicles have several dozens of ECUs at least and the complexity is getting higher and higher to provide more safe and convenient services. This growing complexity makes the traditional methods used during Type Approval for mechanical electrical systems no longer sufficient to validate the safety of vehicles. It is generally accepted that a new safety argument needs to show that the system is safe for its intended application.

To cope with this issue, the ISO 26262 is under development by ISO TC22/SC3/WG16. They emphasis on comprehensive safety analysis including hazard analysis and risk assessment and safety management during whole the lifecycle of vehicle by documenting the safety arguments and its supporting evidence.

We are also developing a functional safety oriented Automotive development methodology(FOAM) which fulfills the requirements of the emerging ISO 26262: road vehicles -Functional Safety including some tools supporting the defined processes(HARA).

  Study of IT based Total Solution for Shipbuilding

IT based total solution technology for shipbuilding is being pushed to increase the national competitiveness in the world market by the convergence of shipbuilding industry and IT industry. It consists of two technologies: the development of group communication system which can work in close collaboration with shipbuilding workers and the technology for monitoring major objects of the shipyard in real time.

Group communication system has been developed to overcome a cross talk of radio walkie-talkie and a connection delay time of TRS(Trunked Ratio System), IP-based Group Communication Server and Terminal including functions of a walkie-talkie, TRS and mobile phone, these are frequently used as group communication devices in the shipbuilding industry.

Real-time monitoring of vessel block/transpoter in shipyard has a final goal to improve manufacturing process of shipbuilding industry. For this, the vessel block/transpoter are traced based on GPS/RFID infrastructure in real time and their information is managed in integration server system.

  Development of Telematics technology

In connected vehicle technology, we develop vehicle communication and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) technologies. In VMC(Vehicular Multihop Communication) project, we develops communication technologies for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications which provide various telematics and ITS services in high mobility environments. Smart Highway is a new intelligent highway system which provides non-stop and accident-free road environments by converging advanced road technologies, information technology (IT) and next generation vehicle technologies. Smart Highway project develops SMART communication system which supports seamless Call and Response (C&R) services for the next generation highway. NPT project develops open automobile-IT based convergence platform technologies which consist of common/application components, S/W component repository and the vehicle testing environment based on VRDS (Virtual Reality based Driving Simulator)/Track-CAR.

In green vehicle IT technology, we develop technologies that augment our driving environment by inducing green driving, economical driving, and safety driving. We apply expertise in collecting and analyzing vehicle information, driving information, road information in real time to reduce CO2 emission and fuel consumption by developing proactive idle-stop technology and road-vehicle management system. We also pursue advances in principles of intelligent Human-Vehicle Interface (HVI) including multi-modality to enhance driving safety by optimizing drivers' workload.

In vehicle-infrastructure convergence technology, we develop basic technologies and systems for automatic vehicle guidance by applying information and telecommunication technology, various technologies are developing such that remote control for vehicle emergency stop, multi-sensor data acquisition, distributed processing of driving context-aware, virtual road construction and infrastructure management.

In Positioning Information Technology, we develop indoor and outdoor seamless localization technology to provide location information of assets and visitors seamlessly from indoor and outdoor. We also develop localization of pedestrians without infra system of localization by applying UWB(Ultra-Wide Band) and P2P(Peer-to-peer) communication technology.

  Development of u-GIS core technology

Vehicle-IT convergence research department has been engaged in the research and development of u-GIS core technology for the following research needs and market trends. u-GIS core technology means a convergence technology between GIS and USN.

• The advent of GeoSensor network which includes location as well as sensing data
• The rapid growth of new u-GIS service market (for example, u-City)
• The absence of standard u-GIS fusion middleware technology
• The absence of on-demand geospatial service technology in the Web2.0

Firstly, we have been developing u-GIS fusion middleware that can manage and analyze the converged GeoSensor-GIS data. In the development of u-GIS fusion middleware, we have been developing GeoSensor data management technology for real-time sensor data and spatial database management technology for real 3D GIS data. Based on the GeoSensor data management and spatial database technologies, we also are developing the converged analysis and the context-awareness technologies for the GeoSensor-GIS data. Finally, we are considering the extension of the u-GIS fusion middleware technology into the mobile environment.

Secondly, u-GIS platform technology and 3D visualization technology for on-demand geospatial information service has been developed. These technologies are basically based on the web 2.0 environment. For the on-demand u-GIS platform technology, we have been developing u-GIS mashup, u-GIS integration, and u-GIS contents systems. Also, for the u-GIS 3D visualization technology, we have been developing a web based land information rendering engine and a location based contents visualization engine. Such engines has an advantage which runs independently of web browser and operating system.