Global Wagon Web: Enabling a Semantic-Enhanced Framework for Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative System

The core technology of Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative System (VICS) has progressed to a “cooperative perception” phase, which necessitates an efficient, reliable and cost-effective information sharing mechanism. However, existing approaches are insufficient to meet the requirements due to a number of critical issues. Firstly, data structures specified according to applications are unable to accommodate system dynamics. Secondly, the lack of open and common protocols and interfaces across heterogenous and distributed systems may lead to severe problems related to data integrity and redundancy. Thirdly, centralized data aggregation not only confronts with limited storage and network congestion, but is also a single point of failure. To address these issues, we propose a novel semantically enhanced architectural layer, Global Wagon Web (GWW), which is a service-oriented and fully decentralized infrastructure to enable live data integration, service reuse and composition, and semantic interoperation within the context of VICS. To illustrate its natures, relevant concepts and forms of structural and behavioral algebraic descriptions are presented with the help of Petri net. Additionally, its key supporting technologies and potential applications are outlined.