DOT seeks ideas on certifying connected vehicles

What: $2 million in grants to support the development of standards to test and certify connected vehicles.

Why: Google's driverless car is just the most prominent of the advancements being made in automated and networked transportation. The Transportation Department wants to encourage the development of technologies that will facilitate machine-to-machine communication between cars and trucks to prevent crashes, improve traffic flow, and share information on weather and road conditions.

Current plans call for using some of the spectrum in the 5 GHz band for transmitting and receiving information from connected vehicle sensors, although Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) recently introduced legislation to reserve some of the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi delivery.

DOT's Connected Vehicle program would require extensive new policies and procedures for qualifying and approving applications and devices and ensuring their interoperability. To that end, DOT is looking for researchers who want to explore the area where technology and regulatory policy meet and develop strategies for testing and certifying connected vehicle technology.

Officials plan to award grants of not more than $600,000 to three teams to develop protocols for testing connected vehicle technologies, with an eye to conducting such tests at scale for a growing industry. Grantees will retain intellectual property rights to their work, but DOT reserves the right to use testing software for government purposes.

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