Vanet-X: A Videogame to Evaluate Information Management in Vehicular Networks

Sergio Ilarri, Eduardo Mena, Víctor Rújula
2013 International Workshop on Information Management for Mobile Applications  
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are attracting considerable research attention, as they are expected to play a major role for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Thus, according to a recent survey by ABI Research 1 , about 62% of new vehicles will be equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications by 2027. Vehicular networks offer new opportunities for the development of interesting mobile applications for drivers, but at the same time they also bring challenges from the data
more » ... gement point of view. Thus, for example, techniques should be developed to estimate the relevance of the information exchanged among the vehicles and to propagate the relevant data in the network efficiently and effectively. As testing the proposals in a real large-scale scenario is impractical, simulators are often used. In this paper we present Vanet-X, an online multiplayer driving videogame that we have developed to help in the difficult evaluation task of data management strategies for VANETs. The idea behind the proposal is to exploit the potential of players around the world driving vehicles in the videogame to effortlessly collect data that can be used to extract some conclusions and fine-tune the proposed data management strategies. So, for example, the videogame allows to evaluate if a certain data management strategy is able to provide useful information to the driver/player (i.e., if the presented information represents an advantage for him/her). We argue that this videogame can be a good complement for existing simulators. As a proof of concept, we have performed some preliminary tests that show the potential interest of the proposal.
dblp:conf/immoa/IlarriMR13 fatcat:j3gy4ct6qvdf7e3cyqdorswtk4