The Tampa Connected Vehicle Pilot Identified Smartphone Limitations in Implementing the Requirements for Pedestrian Safety Applications.

Deployment of the Tampa Connected Vehicle Pilot offers lessons learned on smartphone location accuracy, wireless communication, and phone models for pedestrian safety applications.

Date Posted
05/19/2021
TwitterLinkedInFacebook
Identifier
2021-L01027

Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program Phase 3, System Requirements Specification (SyRS) – Tampa (THEA)

Summary Information

The Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority (THEA) Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot Deployment aimed to test a connected urban environment and measure the effect and impact of CVs in a busy downtown with tolled expressway, bus and street car service, high pedestrian densities, special events and high dynamic traffic demand over the course of a typical day. THEA deployed Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) CV solutions within the environment with the goals of enhancing pedestrian safety, speeding bus operations and reducing conflicts between street cars, pedestrians and passenger cars at locations with high volumes of mixed traffic.

This report describes the updated System Requirements Specification (SyRS) for the Tampa CV Pilot Deployment. The updated SyRS reflects the requirements implemented in the Operate and Maintain phase of the project (Phase 3) and describes the current system requirements derived from the user needs, Concept of Operations, Security Management Operating Concept, Safety Management Plan, and the Performance Measurement and Evaluation Support Plan.

Lessons Learned

One of the goals of the CV Pilot Program was to resolve technical deployment issues. THEA's pilot deployment exposed challenges implementing the system's requirements that resulted in certain requirements not being implemented. The following lessons learned were uncovered related to pedestrian safety applications:

  • The study found that the GPS technology on current smartphones (as of 2020) was unable to sufficiently determine a pedestrian's location and speed, making the application too inaccurate to safely utilize.
  • Assess the various hardware features offered under different phone models, as some models do not include key features (e.g. heading).  
  • Be cognizant of the challenges related to Wi-Fi connectivity. Smartphones may not be able to connect to public Wi-Fi access spots. In addition, when a smartphone has previously connected to a particular public Wi-Fi network, it will attempt to auto-connect to that network, which can prevent the smartphone from connecting to the Wi-Fi network which communicates with the roadside unit.

 

Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program Phase 3, System Requirements Specification (SyRS) – Tampa (THEA)

Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program Phase 3, System Requirements Specification (SyRS) – Tampa (THEA)
Source Publication Date
01/01/2021
Author
Novosad, Stephen; Steve Johnson; Victor Blue; Sisinnio Concas; David Miller; Joe Waggoner; and Bob Frey
Publisher
Prepared by the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority for the USDOT Federal Highway Administration
Other Reference Number
FHWA-JPO-16-315
Goal Areas
System Engineering Elements

Keywords Taxonomy: