H2020 European project HEADSTART (Harmonised European Solutions for Testing Automated Road Transport) was launched in January 2019. It is deployed by a consortium of 21 partners, from 9 different countries, one of which is VEDECOM Institute, under the coordination of IDIADA and Mr Álvaro Arrúe. The consortium’s vision is to define testing and validation procedures of Connected and Automated Driving functions including key technologies such as communications, cyber-security and positioning. The tests will take place in simulation and real-world fields with the aim to validate safety and security performance according to the key users’ needs.

The HEADSTART project will bring together the consortium with other European and national CAD stakeholders to cluster the most relevant existing initiatives, develop methodologies, procedures and tools and drive in a harmonized European solution for testing and validation of automated road vehicles. Within the lifetime of the project, relevant stakeholders will be able to join the experts’ network so as to configure together the methodologies used and also promote the project results’ adoption.

Within the consortium, VEDECOM is responsible for the first work package (WP1) with the objective of establishing the state of the art on testing and validation methodologies, identifying the needs of stakeholders, defining the requirements for key technologies and selecting the most relevant use cases in various traffic scenarios to be tested on proving ground or simulation for Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) certification.

VEDECOM is also contributing to WP2 to define a methodology for CAD testing and validation for the targeted use cases, taking into consideration the key technologies.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824309.

The inauguration of the trinational digital test bed took place on Wednesday, April 3^rd 2019, in Schengen (Luxembourg). On this occasion, VEDECOM presented the TRIICA project, whose main goal is to demonstrate the continuous compatibility for communicating vehicles with driving delegation between three countries in relationship with the infrastructures.

The event took place in the presence of the ministers of Transport of France, Germany and Luxembourg, as well as the Luxembourgish deputy prime minister and the minister of Transport of the Saarland. The creation of the site reflects the common will of the three countries to promote the development and experimentation of various technologies for automated and connected driving in a real-world and cross-border context.

Coordinated by VEDECOM, the TRIICA project is seeking its European partners

Philippe Watteau, CEO of the VEDECOM Institute, took the opportunity of the event to present the TRIICA project (Test and Research on Intelligent Infrastructure for Collaborative Autonomous driving) which was set up by VEDECOM in response to the Call for Expression of Interest published by the Ministries of the three countries in 2018. The project is coordinated by VEDECOM and carried by a consortium of 6 French partners (Cerema, Sanef, YoGoKo as well as the French subsidiaries of 3M and Continental). They aim to further extend the consortium to German and Luxembourgish partners.

TRIICA project’s main goal is to demonstrate the continuous compatibility for communicating vehicles with driving delegation between three countries while valorising the benefits of road infrastructures for the development of automated driving technologies.

Analysing and comparing risk situations for autonomous vehicles in cross-border regions

The first step will consist of detecting and analysing for each country different specific road signalling types, leveraging vehicles with perception capabilities that are representative of level 4 connected autonomous vehicles. This comparison will allow to identify risk situations generated by specificities of cross-border context. Horizontal and vertical innovative road signalling will be tested to assess their potential additional value for autonomous driving vehicle. Continuity of the connectivity management (roaming) in cross-border regions will also be considered. To conclude this first use case, specifications and recommendations will be issued to guide the development of vehicles with driving delegation and their infrastructures.

An enriched Local Dynamic Map (LMD)

The second step will aim to widen the AD vehicles’ perception by eHorizon which is a cloud service enriched by a local dynamic map (LDM) giving the opportunity to inform the vehicle of risk situations leading to a decrease of the current SAE level. The capacity of the vehicle to initiate a fall back safe-stop manoeuvre in an informed refuge zone will therefore be considered.

Designing a new autonomous vehicle prototype to demonstrate the pre-determined concepts

In a last step, a new prototype vehicle with driving delegation, designed by VEDECOM, will integrate specifications developed in previous use cases. This will allow to demonstrate the various driving situations considered in the first steps.

As the project coordinator of TRIICA, VEDECOM will be leading the different research and development activities as well as the experimentations and evaluation.