Abstract
The development of traffic data collection is promoted by IT technology. Probe vehicles are playing an increasingly important role in the field of ITS, and showing high ability for various ITS applications in the last decade. The overwhelming superiority of probe technology relies on a good coverage and a high penetration rate of probe vehicles. Although conceivable, the expectation of ubiquitous coverage of the entire road network is still far away from actual implementation nowadays. Through the review of current studies on the probe systems in ITS projects around the world, recent advances in probe technology are explored, following by an analysis of the impending obstacles or trade-offs that were faced by the extension of probe implementation. It is recognized that a cost-efficiency probe deployment scheme is of certainty to be the impetus of probe system evolution.
