Your car may soon be able to warn you what or who is coming around the bend. Such new systems in vehicles or along highways are among the hot topics at the 8th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC ’05). The conference takes place 13 to 16 September at the Congress Center of the Messe Wien Neu, in Vienna, Austria.

Intelligent transportation refers to a whole galaxy of hardware and software systems being developed to make transportation systems safer while carrying more people and cargo faster. The systems are being used on roads, rail, and water and in passenger vehicles as well as trucks and cargo containers. They provide a variety of information—what’s immediately ahead of a vehicle, overall traffic patterns so drivers can change routes to avoid congestion, and advisories about transit conditions on municipal transit systems.

But the information presented may not always be clear and understandable and can even be confusing, notes IEEE Senior Member Paul Kostek, a systems engineer with Boeing Corp., in Seattle. Kostek is vice president for conference activities of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, the conference sponsor. Sessions at the Vienna meeting will examine how people use the information they receive and how it can best be presented.

“The fundamental issue for system designers is finding a balance in the amount of information provided to vehicle operators—so that you don’t overwhelm them and they have a hard time understanding what it is they’re seeing,” he says.

The conference is expected to draw about 400 industrial engineers and research scientists, along with representatives of local and national governments, operators of public transportation systems, car manufacturers, fleet owners, toll-road operators, and motorist organizations

Cutting-edge technologies will have an important place at the meeting. According to IEEE Associate Member Fei-Yue Wang, president-elect of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. The most significant of these new areas are:

• camera-based systems for traffic monitoring, control, and management

• techniques employed in vehicles and on roads for helping drivers and increasing safety

• computer simulations applied to the modeling, analysis, and design of integrated transportation systems

Intelligent vehicles pioneer Alberto Broggi, program cochair of the meeting, predicts that robust vehicle-mounted vision systems for detecting other vehicles, obstacles, and pedestrians could be commercially available—and reasonably priced—within the next five years. So-called vision systems that automatically detect lane markings and alert the driver when a car wanders from its lane are already being offered in some automobiles.

Broggi, a professor in the department of information engineering at the University of Parma, Italy, served as coordinator of the Argo Project. In the late 1990s, the project demonstrated an intelligent vehicle—equipped with cameras and computerized control systems—that drove without a driver over about 2000 kilometers throughout Italy, under normal road, traffic, and weather conditions.

Broggi says his group is pursuing several similar efforts in cooperation with partners that include Volkswagen and the U.S. Army. “All of these projects are related to the detection of something on the road—for example, the detection of road markings, obstacles, pedestrians, other vehicles, traffic, and so on—all using cameras,” he says.

Wang, a professor of systems and industrial engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson, also notes that the role of the United States in developing seems to be diminishing. “The U.S. had the lead in [intelligent transportation systems] research and implementation in the world a decade ago, but I am not so sure now,” he says. ”At the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium [held in June in Las Vegas], I saw almost no participation by U.S. automakers, but a significant number of cutting-edge projects being conducted by [European Union] automakers.” He thinks he’ll find the same situation at ITSC ’05.

Wang notes that the Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, now less than a year old, has nearly 900 members, and he expects it will have more than 1000 by the end of this year. Significantly, he notes, “most of our members are from outside the United States, and new to IEEE.”

To register for the conference or to find more information, visit www.itsc2005.at.