The European Commission has funded research on "Intelligent vehicles" since 1987 when research started on definition of functions of the first systems. The research evolved through traffic management tools to advanced driver assistance systems to cooperative systems today. These systems are now coming to the market but their uptake is slow despite their important impact on road safety and its huge death toll, a major societal problem. Therefore the Commission has launched the "Intelligent Car Initiative" that builds upon three pillars: 1) the eSafety forum for consensus building amongst all stakeholders, to remove bottlenecks to implementation, 2) the research on intelligent vehicle technologies and intelligent road infrastructure within the 7th framework programme to push forward the research in this area and to promote cooperation between all stakeholders, 3) the awareness raising actions in order to enhance acceptance of the customers and foster the market introduction of intelligent vehicle systems.

EU funded research activities in the area of “Intelligent Vehicles”

Rosalie A. Zobel was born in England. She received a bachelor's degree in physics from Nottingham University, UK, in 1964, and a PhD in radiation physics from London University in 1967.

She started her career in the Information Technology industry in ICL in 1967, and later held positions as a systems engineer in CERN (Centre Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), Geneva, Switzerland, the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, UK, and the Max-Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching, Germany. At the latter she became operations manager of the first CRAY Supercomputer centre in continental Europe.

In 1981 she moved to the USA and took up a position in the AT&T Headquarters, Basking Ridge, USA. She held positions as senior marketing manager for open systems software both for the USA and international markets, and was responsible from 1983-1986 for the international UNIX business. In 1986 she became senior marketing manager for information technology products in AT&T Japan.

She returned to Europe in 1988 as Deputy Head of Unit of the European Community's ESPRIT Business Systems unit. In 1991 she launched the initiative in Open Microprocessor systems (OMI). From 1995 she was the Head of unit "Business systems, multimedia and microprocessor applications", and EU-coordinator of the G7 Pilot Project "Global Marketplace for SMEs". From 1999-2002 she was Director of “New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce”. From 2003 she is Director of "Components and Systems" in the Information Society and Media Directorate-General of the European Commission.