GNSS State of Play: The Road Segment

In global terms, the road sector is one of the largest and most dynamic consumer markets, representing a major business opportunity for GNSS technology applications. With a projected 2023 worldwide market for road-vehicle GNSS receivers now estimated at 620 million, the future for EGNOS and GALILEO-related road applications looks promising.

At the same time, steadily increasing road traffic in Europe does have a significant down side, including traffic congestion, accidents and increasing pollution. But GNSS technologies, now standard equipment in cars and other vehicles, are enabling services that respond to all of these issues, from fuel-saving route guidance to electronic toll charging, life-saving applications and ensuring the security of hazardous materials transportation.

Read the Report: GNSS Market Report Road

The Agency is focusing on three key GNSS Road application areas:

1. Safety-critical applications
2. Liability and payment applications
3. Policy-related applications

Safety Critical Applications

“Safety-critical applications leverage precise and secure positioning in situations where humans can come to harm or where systems or the environment could be damaged,” says GSA Market Development Officer Alberto Fernandez-Wyttenbach. As an example, he cites the so-called ‘connected vehicles’. Here, GNSS positioning information provides situational awareness that can be transmitted to other vehicles through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, contributing to the safety of the driver.

Watch This: EGNOS for Road

Meanwhile, autonomous vehicles are also rising on the agenda. These vehicles are enabled by a combination of different technologies and sensors that allow the vehicle itself to identify the optimal trajectory. European GNSS will play a key role here by providing relevant inputs for integrated navigation, such as precise vehicle location and speed.

Another key safety-related application is dangerous goods tracking, involving the transmission of GNSS-based positioning data on vehicles carrying such goods, along with other information about the status of the cargo.
Liability, Payment and Policy-Related Applications

“Liability and payment applications generate information of legal or economic significance, based on positioning data,” Fernandez-Wyttenbach says. “For example, under GNSS-based schemes for road-user charging (RUC), operators can charge motorists for the actual distance travelled, without barriers or gantries. And interoperable GNSS-based road charging is much easier to expand and to link with other similar schemes, even across borders.”

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In a different but related sector, insurance telematics use GNSS data to assess individual driving behaviour. The so-called ‘black boxes’ rely on GNSS data to increase the fairness of motor insurance for both insurers and subscribers..

 “And then there is a set of new applications, which are used to apply the transport policies introduced by national or international legislations”, he explains. As an example he cites the pan-European ‘eCall’ scheme. The scheme involves a GNSS-enabled in-vehicle system that sends a 112 emergency call in the event of an accident, thus accelerating emergency assistance to drivers. When the European Parliament voted in favour of a new eCall regulation last April, Commissioner for Digital Society and Economy Günther H. Oettinger said: “eCall is a perfect example of an EU-supported project that has developed technological solutions to save people's lives.”

Another application the GSA is looking at is digital tachographs. The so-called smart tachographs leverage GNSS positioning to support road enforcers, recording the position of a given vehicle at different points during the working day.

The Next Generation of GNSS Receivers

Newer and higher-performance receivers now set for release will play an important role in safety-critical applications, particularly connected vehicles and autonomous driving. These two applications represent a disruptive and revolutionary innovation and will have to overcome a number of regulatory, economical, technological and social challenges.

For instance, further software development and testing is still needed, security is still an issue, as is public opinion. Liability models must be defined in a way that consumers are convinced to pay a premium for self-driving technologies. Finally, governments still need to define appropriate policies.

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Right now, the United States seems to move first in this area, being more flexible than Europe in terms of road transportation policy and regulation. The US is also the world leader in automotive sales revenues, and the use of road vehicles is more popular there than in Europe or Asia.

On the other hand, some European countries are making an impressive investment in pilot projects for driverless cars, so Europe is not completely off the radar in this area.

Research and Impact

The European satellite navigation systems Galileo and EGNOS represent important new implements for change in Europe and in the drive to meet key global challenges, including the ever-increasing demand for mobility.

The importance of road transport has not escaped the European Union and is reflected in the proportion of EU research funding set aside for road-related projects. Under the GNSS section of the EU research budget, road projects have been and will continue to be among the most frequently proposed by the R&D industry. The importance of road transport has also been highlighted in the GSA’s GNSS Market Report and in the Agency’s market development strategy.

According to GSA analyses, road transport has also been among the research areas achieving the greatest market impact, in terms of the number of real marketable products or services achieved.

All this points to a solid central position for road-related GNSS, backed by strong support from Europe’s private and public sectors.

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