To demonstrate the true openness of its innovative architecture, the EU-supported CVIS Integrated Project is launching an Application Submission Contest (ASC). The purpose of this contest is to make the ITS community aware of the CVIS concept and demonstrate its possibilities by selecting the most promising applications and supporting the contest-winning teams to develop and demonstrate their applications in cooperative systems test beds in Germany, France, Italy, UK, Sweden, Netherlands and Belgium.

The application submission contest is set-up in a way that allows participants to avoid major expenses. When the assessment procedure of the applications is finished the jury will announce the winning candidates entitle to receive financial support for the final development and demonstration of their applications. The prizes, i.e. financial compensation for development and publicity costs borne by the participant, will be distributed to the winners, to be announced in an awards ceremony at the ITS World Congress in Stockholm in September 2009.

The ASC is a competitive call open to all potential Europe-based companies (public, private and individual) that are ready to develop CVIS-compliant applications. Universities and SME’s are specifically encouraged to participate.
The contest will be divided in three phases, with assessment periods in between to select candidates passing to the next phase:

Phase 1 - Application phase
2 February – 30 March 2009
All interested organisations and individuals are invited to enter the contest by submitting an ASC_Application Form describing their service idea.

Phase 2 - Development in controlled environment
20 April – 12 June 2009
Short-listed candidates will develop their applications relying on a software development kit provided by CVIS/FOAM. All services that achieve CVIS-compliance will be considered "finalists", from which the Jury will select the gold, silver and bronze winners.

Phase 3 - Live demo at a test site

1 July – 31 October 2009
The finalist services will be demonstrated at one of the CVIS test sites. An awards ceremony will take place during the ITS World Congress in Stockholm in September 2009, announcing gold, silver and bronze winners.
The Jury will be composed of a panel of experts representing the automotive, infrastructure and services sectors. The assessment of the applications will be based on 3 criteria that are of equal importance:

1. The potential impact of the application (efficiency and/or safety impact)

2. The innovative aspects of the application

3. Compliance of the developed application with the CVIS system concept.

For each applicant, a score of 0 to 3 (non-existent, low, medium or high) will be given according to each of the criteria.

All interested organisations and individuals are invited to enter the contest by submitting an ASC_Application Form describing their service idea by 30 March 2009.
Please visit the project website for further information, or write an e-mail to:
cvis_asc@mail.ertico.com for questions related to the organisation of the ASC in general.

For technical questions please contact us at cvis_foam_developers@mail.ertico.com .
The FOAM sub-project is providing the Software Development Kit (SDK) to facilitate the development and deployment of cooperative applications for in-vehicle and roadside equipment.

It is a the standardized OSGi R4 Service Platform. The FOAM SDK is based on an evaluation licence agreement provided by Makewave on behalf of the CVIS consortium.

A set of CVIS FOAM specific API’s has been developed by FOAM partners. This includes functions like access to sensors, data and security. One of these functions, the DDS (Distributed Directory Service) serves as "yellow pages" for CVIS network wide services, i.e. it could announce the service to vehicles and road side units. The Connection Manager API provides access to CALM functionality in the CVIS router. It extends the standard OSGi IO Connector service and adds extra functionality.
All FOAM SDK will be made available in the FOAM repository at https://cvis.be/svn/cvis-foam.

For deployment and provisioning, CVIS will also provide the host management center. This component is responsible for deploying and provisioning services to the CVIS hosts in vehicles and road site units.

About the CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure System) project

CVIS is an integrated R&D project co-funded by the European Union under the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) priority of the 6th Framework Programme for Research. With a budget of over €40 million and a consortium of over 60 leading industrial, public and academic organisations, CVIS will complete its 4-year programme in early 2010. CVIS is coordinated by ERTICO-ITS Europe.
CVIS aims to design, develop and test the technologies needed to allow cars to communicate with each other and with the nearby roadside infrastructure. CVIS’ achievements will be applied in test sites in seven countries across Europe, to increase road safety and efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of road transport.