Cutting edge slashdot, this stuff has been around forever, the oxymoron has a national association, URL:http://www.itsa.org , I happen to chair one of its state chapters.
This stuff started over 10 years ago when it was called intelligent highway vehicle systems or (IVHS), it morphed into ITS when some folks in the Federal HIGHWAY Administration realized that congress would more likely fund this if it paid lip service to other modes of transport. Over the last few years these other modes have begun to get the same level of interest or funding.
For many years the transportation research board URL:http://www.trb.org thought that new road technology was concrete that set faster or lasted longer, traffic light timing or safer school bus seats. It also had an engineering constituency that reflected this.
Now ITS has become a catch all for almost any software, microprocessor or sensor used in the transportation network.
Just like Artificial Intelligence and other field that flatter themselves by including intelligence in their moniker, as long as its called ITS it has yet to hit the mainstream.
OK so transportation engineers can use things that take advantage of Moore's law too and those funding our transportation infrastructure should invest in technology. Forget the general stuff and drill down on RFID, AVL, similiarities between traffic simulation and kinematic flow, congestion pricing, machine vision in surveillance cameras a la automatic license plate reading of every card going in and out of the city of London, etc. But a thread on ITS, please...
RFID has been used for a very long time, Intermec bought a lot of Amtech includings its RFID technology. Amtech comes from "animal technology' and first put chips in cows, they then moved onto railroad cars to keep "track" of them.
Notice all those toll tags out there. There have been systems since the early 1990's, the early ones also being Amtech (which disappeared after they put out a horrible bid for a toll system in FL that left more than 20M on the table). EZPass predates this IP, etc.
As you said, correctly, this IP is a more narrow field of use than generic RFID.
Any reasonable authentication system will require more than one factor, only if you have someone's ID card and passphrase would this work in a 2 or 3 factor scenario. Maybe a concern for Lexus but not for most access control systems.
In the world of biometrics its a trade off, throughput, accuracy and price for customer acceptance. Fingerprint is easy to use and inexpensive.
The US has 4 million issued to DoD employees and up to 40 million will be issued to government employees, contractors and some state employees by 2008. Extensions of use for transit and parking in Washington, DC and posssibley other cities likely. The will have biometrics, including but not limited to face and finger.
Digital red light and speed cameras have been doing this stuff for some time in order to have evidence admitted in court. Digital watermarks, run length codes and other techniques. It's a little more advanced in Europe than here but coming. Funny but I don't think the electronic toll ones do anything other than making sure that the data has a chain of custody being tracked (so they trust the messenger and then implicitly the message)
This specification has been around for years, nothing new here; these roadside beacons to talk to vehicles as refresh points.
The more interesting stuff involves mesh network based vehicle communication systems.
The oxymoron of intelligent transportation systems covers this. www.itsa.org is the trade organization.
While the FCC announcement may be recent this is old news.
Slashdot Mirror
Cutting edge slashdot, this stuff has been around forever, the oxymoron has a national association, URL:http://www.itsa.org , I happen to chair one of its state chapters. This stuff started over 10 years ago when it was called intelligent highway vehicle systems or (IVHS), it morphed into ITS when some folks in the Federal HIGHWAY Administration realized that congress would more likely fund this if it paid lip service to other modes of transport. Over the last few years these other modes have begun to get the same level of interest or funding. For many years the transportation research board URL:http://www.trb.org thought that new road technology was concrete that set faster or lasted longer, traffic light timing or safer school bus seats. It also had an engineering constituency that reflected this. Now ITS has become a catch all for almost any software, microprocessor or sensor used in the transportation network. Just like Artificial Intelligence and other field that flatter themselves by including intelligence in their moniker, as long as its called ITS it has yet to hit the mainstream. OK so transportation engineers can use things that take advantage of Moore's law too and those funding our transportation infrastructure should invest in technology. Forget the general stuff and drill down on RFID, AVL, similiarities between traffic simulation and kinematic flow, congestion pricing, machine vision in surveillance cameras a la automatic license plate reading of every card going in and out of the city of London, etc. But a thread on ITS, please...
RFID has been used for a very long time, Intermec bought a lot of Amtech includings its RFID technology. Amtech comes from "animal technology' and first put chips in cows, they then moved onto railroad cars to keep "track" of them. Notice all those toll tags out there. There have been systems since the early 1990's, the early ones also being Amtech (which disappeared after they put out a horrible bid for a toll system in FL that left more than 20M on the table). EZPass predates this IP, etc. As you said, correctly, this IP is a more narrow field of use than generic RFID.
Any reasonable authentication system will require more than one factor, only if you have someone's ID card and passphrase would this work in a 2 or 3 factor scenario. Maybe a concern for Lexus but not for most access control systems. In the world of biometrics its a trade off, throughput, accuracy and price for customer acceptance. Fingerprint is easy to use and inexpensive.
The US has 4 million issued to DoD employees and up to 40 million will be issued to government employees, contractors and some state employees by 2008. Extensions of use for transit and parking in Washington, DC and posssibley other cities likely. The will have biometrics, including but not limited to face and finger.
Digital red light and speed cameras have been doing this stuff for some time in order to have evidence admitted in court. Digital watermarks, run length codes and other techniques. It's a little more advanced in Europe than here but coming. Funny but I don't think the electronic toll ones do anything other than making sure that the data has a chain of custody being tracked (so they trust the messenger and then implicitly the message)
This specification has been around for years, nothing new here; these roadside beacons to talk to vehicles as refresh points. The more interesting stuff involves mesh network based vehicle communication systems. The oxymoron of intelligent transportation systems covers this. www.itsa.org is the trade organization. While the FCC announcement may be recent this is old news.