Roundtable Informs Wireless Innovation for Transportation

On May 23, as part of President Obama’s Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative, we hosted a roundtable discussion at the White House Conference Center with a number of top technology leaders and visionaries representing the transportation and communications industries.

The intent was to explore ways to catalyze innovation through research and development in the arena of emerging broadband wireless technologies and applications aimed at the transportation sector. The transportation component of this initiative, called for in the President’s FY 2012 budget, is called the Wireless Innovation for Transportation (WIN for Transportation) Initiative. This initiative would complement and build upon the Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) ongoing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) research program. The WIN for Transportation Initiative would provide the USDOT’s ITS Program and its stakeholders the ability to seek new and innovative opportunities to pursue ground-breaking research and development toward deployment of wireless technology applications. It proposes to develop and demonstrate innovative wireless transportation applications that deliver safety, mobility, emergency response, energy, and environmental benefits to passenger, fleet, and freight transportation systems. Part of the roundtable discussion focused on the roles that policy, technology, and applications play in advancing transportation wireless innovation. During this discussion, participants addressed a number of important issues such as standards, availability of open data, the advantages of top-down or bottom-up approaches to accelerating technology innovation, and the importance of the proper driver interface. Participants were encouraged to further share their ideas through our recently announced Request for Information. We also exchanged several ideas as part of the proposed wireless research, technology, testing, and model deployment program.