SMaRTCaR: An integrated smartphone-based platform to support traffic management applications

A massive research effort is recently going in the direction of interfacing cars with smartphones to offer value-added services to driver and passengers. Such an interest is motivated by the large popularity of smartphones and by the observation that vehicles can act as effective collectors of information from the surrounding environment. Indeed, modern cars are endowed with several sensors forming an in-vehicle network, which provides kinematics information, automotive diagnostic services, etc. Cars can be further equipped with external sensing devices to monitor specific physical parameters, such as pollution, humidity, temperature, etc. If properly collected and delivered, such data can contribute to make the road transport greener, smarter, and safer. With the purpose of supporting and improving data collection and distribution, in this paper a smartphone-based platform is designed that exploits low-cost dedicated hardware to interact with sensors on board and in the vehicle surroundings. Retrieved data are classified and then opportunistically transmitted via the most convenient wireless interface to the specific remote control and monitoring center. A prototype is also developed to assess the technological feasibility of our conceived platform.