Final Report Summary - CARMESH (Ubiquitous Wireless Mesh Networks for Next-Generation Personal Digital Automotive Services)
1. Carmesh Project Vision
Carmesh is an EU FP7 project (carmesh.eu) which focuses on the delivery of advanced automotive services to the Connected Car.
The Carmesh vision is one in which there is seamless integration of the digital life into the automotive context. This is realized by an advanced service delivery architecture focused on the mobile and integrated with disparate wireless network interfaces.
The Carmesh vision is one in which the car’s dashboard and on-board-unit becomes an extension of user’s mobile application and services. Also, a wealth of information on the car conditions and the user’s driving behavior are used to augment existing digital services the user has access to through its smartphones and other Internet devices.
You can find more on our vision in one of our blog posts (http://blog.carmesh.eu/2013/05/28/connected-car-the-carmesh-vision/).
2. How can this project be used by EU citizens in simple language (non-technical)?
The CarMesh project will bring all the richness of Internet into the car! Cars will become connected to Internet services through the driver's smartphone, but it’s not only about Internet in the car.
The long-term vision is that with the Connected Car, EU citizens can be more productive drivers. For example, a service could gather all sorts of information on driver’s habits, places visited, itineraries and Internet activities to ultimately help the driver be more on time, drive more safely, achieve better fuel-efficiency, get easier access to parking and carpooling, and be reminded of enjoyable places to visit or nearby places where friends checked-in. Every bit of relevant information from the car can be mined here: speed sensors, temperature monitors, steering wheel, cameras, etc. More important, users won’t have to have to two separate information lives: one at the PC/Smartphones and another in the car.
Users activities when in the car will be seamlessly integrated into their social media lifes.
Last but certainly not least, vehicles with Internet access could be used by national/local authorities to inform the public about accidents, construction works, etc. This innovation could be also used by local businesses, to announce events and offers to passing by cars (an opt-in to the service can help deal with users privacy concerns here). With the forecasts for the automotive applications market to reach $800m by 2017, it is clear that the project is quite relevant socio-economically, and it offers significant opportunity for the European competitiveness in the sector.
3. What concrete/demonstrable results/prototype are expected between June 2013 and January 2014?
The CARMESH team has built a demonstrator that is designed to communicate the CARMESH “Connected Car” vision. The demo focuses in 3 different business use cases, which were showcased in Automotive Linux Summit’13: (i) the first use case focuses on the business user, providing integration with the user’s calendar and linking this to expected arrival time for meeting; (ii) a use case which provides social integration and highlights locations which have social relevance for the driver on their map; (iii) and a data logging application which integrates with standardized automotive interfaces.
As well as the primary project outputs above, Zylia (the Polish company involved in the project) has successfully established new partnerships with other Irish software companies. The secondment of Zylia staff to Ireland under CARMESH played a critical part in establishing these new commercial partnerships – a very strong story of the benefit of pan-EU staff exchange under the FP7 People programme. Prototypes and commercial products are being built under these new collaborations, too. During the two industry events (SmartDevCon and Automotive Linux Summit) Zylia researchers presented Carmesh prototype applications which gained much interest from the automotive sector audience. Zylia is currently in talks with several automotive and software companies regarding incorporation of Carmesh prototypes in their product portfolios.
4. Any media coverage about the project already?
CARMESH is ramping up its own business/tech blog (blog.carmesh.eu) maintains an active Twitter feed and publishes educational video demonstrations on a regular basis. Besides scientific publications, Carmesh is constantly adding educational content on its blog that attracts a growing global audience (see snapshot below). The Carmesh project blog reached a peak of ~1,000+ unique monthly visitors.
Some of CARMESH’s blogposts have been featured on GENIVI website, which is driving a large traffic to Carmesh’s blog. GENIVI is an industry alliance committed to driving the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open-source development platform.
CARMESH’s second workshop, Wireless Days’12 was reported by many specialized international media outlets. CARMESH also received media coverage from TMCnet Bloggers here: http://goo.gl/xMxXo
The project has been regularly invited to the Marie Curie Action seminar series run by the Irish NCP to encourage more FP7 People programmes applications (link - http://goo.gl/WD5rh). Zylia gave an interview to the Polish NCP on experiences in IAPPs - which was published in September 2013.
Finally, a CARMESH research fellow won the best paper award in the industry-oriented IEEE CCNC conference, which brought a fair bit of specialised international media attention to the CARMESH project.
5. Are there any media/demo events planned by the end of 2013?
- CARMESH has produced a public demo event at SmartDevCon2 (http://smartdevcon.eu) which gathers academic and industry practitioners interested in building vehicular communication systems.
- A public demo is planned in the prestigious international Automotive Linux Summit (Oct’13) that gathers practitioners and experts from the automotive industry.
- Finally, CARMESH has a modus operandi of regularly producing demonstration videos showing how the project is evolving - these are mostly intended for practitioners in the area, but are getting significant traction. All demo videos are accessible from the CARMESH website.