SBIR Phase I: Enabling High-Bandwidth Audio-Visual Connectivity to Vehicles with Public Safety Applications

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目探讨了车辆（特别是警车、消防车和救护车等应急车辆）和指挥控制中心之间强大的高带宽视听通信系统的设计和实施。该系统被称为Virtuoso，其核心创新在于其特定的算法设计，该设计有效地利用了网络多样性，使来自单个流的媒体流量同时在多个无线网络中健壮地分割。Virtuosois从底层设计，以满足商业和社会需求，促进新的公共安全应用以前是不可能的。例如，通过在救护车上的病人和急诊室医生之间建立视听联系，它使医院系统能够提供新的和改进的紧急护理服务。该项目的智力价值在于其特定的设计，使这些新的应用和改进成为可能。该设计包括特定的多路径条带化技术和基于云的管理服务，使系统能够扩展到大量车辆。该项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力在于尽可能提高公共安全和应急服务的质量。例如，该系统在医疗救护车和医院之间实现了一种新的、实时的、高带宽的视听连接。与麦迪逊地区多个紧急医疗系统的初步谈判表明，这些应用具有挽救生命的潜力。这项技术的商业潜力源于汽车领域日益增长的需求。长期的商业化机会是存在的，并且正在与各种紧急医疗服务组织（包括Dane County EMS）和公共巴士运营商（Madison Metro Transit和Van Galder bus， Coach USA的子公司）进行讨论，其中基于重大部署的试验正在进行1年以上。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project explores the design and implementation of a robust and high-bandwidth audio-visual communication system between vehicles (especially, emergency vehicles such as police cars, firetrucks, and ambulances) and command and control centers. The core innovation in this system, called Virtuoso, lies in specific algorithmic design that uses network diversity efficiently where media traffic from individual flows are robustly striped across multiple wireless networks simultaneously. Virtuosois designed from the ground-up to meet commercial and societal needs in facilitating new public safety applications not possible before.For example, by establishing an audio-visual link between patients in ambulances and emergency room doctors, it enables hospital systems to provide new and improved urgent care services. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its specific design that enables these new applications and improvements. This design includes specific multi-path striping techniques and a cloud-based management service that allow the system to scale to a large number of vehicles.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project lies in improving the quality of public safety and emergency services possible. For example, this system enables a new, real-time, high-bandwidth audio-visual link between medical ambulances and hospitals. Preliminary talks with multiple Emergency Medical Systems in the Madison area indicate the life-saving potential of these applications. The commercial potential of this technology stems from growing needs in the vehicular space. Longer term commercialization opportunities exist and are being discussed with various emergency medical services organizations (including the Dane County EMS) and public bus operators (Madison Metro Transit and Van Galder Bus, a subsidiary of Coach USA) where significant deployment based trials are ongoing for more than 1 year.