Volvo teams up with Norway and Sweden Transport Authorities on Road Safety Initiative using Cloud-based M2M Platform

Volvo Car Group, a Swedish premium car producer and one of the world's leading makers of drive systems for industrial and maritime applications, The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens Vegvesen) and the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), authorities taking charge of the operation and maintenance of state roads and railroads, pilot initiative on road safety. The project is designed to generate and transmit information from individual vehicles to a cloud-based system.

The use of sensors can be traced back more than a century ago, and they had come in various forms and used in several different applications. The first man-made sensor was the thermostat which came in the market in 1883, infrared sensors have been around since around the late 1940s, and other forms have been invented since, including wireless network sensors. WNS are autonomous kinds of sensors that are commonly used to monitor physical or environmental conditions.

The idea is to have the vehicle send real-time data about road conditions to the cloud-based M2M platform and the information can then be passed on to nearby vehicles alerting them about these road hazards. For example, when the car sensor detects an icy, slippery area, this information will be transmitted to Volvo Cars' database through a mobile network and a warning is automatically sent back to the network so that warning details can be sent to vehicles coming near the area, making it possible for them to avoid it or take a different route when necessary. The application in the car will also adapt to the warning given and match its severity level based on its speed and current road condition.

According to Erik Israelsson, project leader, cooperative intelligent transport system at Volvo, "The pilot is one of the first practical examples of the way communication between vehicles over the mobile network enables vehicles to 'speak' to each other and with the traffic environment. This can contribute to making traffic safer,"

Volvo currently has fifty cars deployed for testing and may substantially increase its number in the winter season. Volvo is also the first to link is built-in car sensors to its cloud-based database in an effort to make both driving safer and road maintenance more efficient. And Brazil being one of Volvo's fastest growing market globally, will definitely benefit from this once it is made available worldwide.

LeadingQuest and Parlacom Brazil, one of the leading providers of cloud-based M2M Solutions in Brazil and the US, salutes Volvo Car Group for supporting this initiative. "A cloud-based platform provides the mobility needed and intended for these kinds of applications since it does not require infrastructure." said Clovis Lacerda, CEO of LeadingQuest and Parlacom.

With the recent taxation regulation on M2M devices in Brazil, Mr. Lacerda believes that the country is at its best position right now to embrace such initiative as road traffic crashes is the leading cause of hospitalization, death and injury in the country. He further emphasized that being CEO of one of the largest providers of cloud-based M2M solutions in Brazil, Parlacom has a very strong foothold in this market given its dedicated connectivity with major mobile networks and carriers in Brazil.

Erik Israelsson said that the strategic focus on connectivity within our new scalable product architecture paves the way for more cloud-based safety solutions, and Mr. Lacerda unquestionably agrees with this.