Southeast Michigan 2014 Test Bed Project for Connected Vehicles: The Next Step Toward Deploying ITS

The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) owns and operates a major on-road test facility in Southeast Michigan dedicated to the development and testing of the next generation of Intelligent Transportation Systems - connected vehicle technologies, standards and applications. Over the course of the next 12 months, this facility will undergo significant upgrades with the intent of supporting the next generation of field equipment and site operators. This paper is focused on highlighting how the Southeast Michigan Test Bed 2014 project is supporting this advance in connected vehicles by providing a complete connected vehicle environment including broadcast and peer-to-peer communication based activities, using all seven available DSRC channels, and facilitating the flow and evolution of (intersection and vehicle) situation data. This test bed environment is intended to support the next generation of hardware and applications by providing a consistent data environment and a common graphical language for defining applications, data flows and interfaces. This paper will give an overview of the Southeast Michigan Test Bed 2014 project architecture for Connected Vehicles.