ICT SHOK: Cooperative Traffic ICT
UbiRoad project proposal (2008)
(Semantic Middleware Platform for Dynamic Context-Aware Smart Road Environments)
A smart road environment is such a traffic environment that is equipped with all necessary facilities to enable seamless
mobile service provisioning to the users of that traffic environment. However, advanced sensors and network architectures deployed within the
traffic environment are insufficient to make mobile service provisioning autonomous and proactive, thus minimizing drivers’ distraction during their
presence in the traffic environment. For that, an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), which is operating on top of numerous sensor and access
networks and governing the process of mobile services provisioning to the users in self-managed and proactive way, must be deployed.
Specifically, such ITS should provide solutions to the following two interoperability problems: interoperability between
the in-car and roadside devices produced and programmed by different vendors and/or providers, and the need for seamless and flexible
collaboration (including discovery, coordination, conflict resolution and possibly even negotiation) amongst the smart road devices and services.
To tackle these problems, UbiRoad intends utilization of semantic languages (based on semantic technologies such as RDF) for declarative
specification of devices’ and services’ behavior, application of software agents as engines executing those specifications, and establishment
of common ontologies to facilitate and govern seamless interoperation of devices, services and traffic users within smart road environments.
The major project objective is to provide the basis for creation of fully interoperable (though heterogeneous), highly
dynamic and extensible smart road environments. To achieve that, a specialized agent-driven middleware platform UbiRoad will be designed.
It is envisioned that each ubiquitous smart device (as well as each individual service exposed as an individually accessible entity through the
environment) will be assigned a representative agent within UbiRoad. The resulting multi-agent system will be exploited as a mediation facility
enabling rich cooperation capabilities (e.g., discovery, coordination, adaptability, and negotiation) amongst the devices inhabiting the smart traffic
environment. Utilization of semantic technologies in UbiRoad will ensure efficient and autonomous coordination among UbiRoad agents and will
thus ensure interoperability between associated devices and services.
Also, UbiRoad Upper Ontology and UbiRoad device and service ontologies will be designed as an important asset
contributing to interoperability realization within future smart traffic environments. These ontologies will be used not only for the benefit of
UbiRoad middleware architecture, but also and most importantly for facilitation of interoperability and integration of existing and brand-new
future devices, services and methodologies. The core ontology-driven UbiRoad platform as well as a few demonstration cases of its utilization
in various application and traffic scenarios will be developed during the project period. Through appropriate declarative specification of smart
road components’ behavior and using sophisticated choreographic control of agents in a multimodal dynamic networked environment, the
UbiRoad will enable various devices and services to automatically discover each other and to configure complex services functionally composed
of the individual services’ and devices’ functionalities.
