SAM Project – Security & Acceptability for Automated Driving

SAM is a national project of driving and autonomous mobility experiments conducted on a large scale on open roads. The challenge is twofold:

Develop the uses and knowledge of these systems by citizens and territorial actors,

Strengthen the future regulatory framework, particularly in terms of safety validation by 2022.

A French large scale experimentation for autonomous mobility

Officially launched on June 20, 2019, the SAM project is the result of the EVRA (Expérimentation de véhicules routiers automatisés – Experiment of automated vehicles on open roads) call for projects as part of the Investments for the Future Program (PIA) which is at the heart of the national strategy for the development of automated vehicles presented by the Government in May 2018.

The aim: to contribute to the development of safety validation methodologies, to the improvement of knowledge on uses, acceptability and societal impacts.

Creation of SAM consortium

In response to this call for projects, a consortium coordinated by the PFA (Plateforme Automobile) came together to create the SAM project (Safety and Acceptability of Automated Driving and Mobility). It is made up of industrial (manufacturers, transport operators, system and equipment manufacturers, infrastructure managers) and research players, associated with territorial partners.

On April 24, 2019, the call for projects EVRA selected the SAM consortium project as well as the Autonomous Shuttle Experiments (ENA) project led by the French Institute of Science and Technology of Transport, Planning and Networks (UGE).

A project supported by local authorities, industry and academics

The SAM project has a consolidated budget of €110 million, of which €75 million is provided by the partners and €35 million by the State. Local and regional authorities contribute to investment in infrastructure.

The project brings together 18 industrial and academic partners

The project works closely with the cities and communities concerned by the experiments. Brought together in a Collège des Territoires, these communities actively contribute to the analysis of feedback and the emergence of recommendations for future projects and deployments.

Project SAM official kick of on June 20, 2019: Lancement officiel du projet le 20 juin 2019 : Anne-Marie Idrac (Stratégie nationale véhicules autonomes), Luc Chatel (PFA), Nadège Faul (VEDECOM), Jean-François Sencerin (PFA):

SAM pilot experimentations

The project targets six categories of autonomous vehicle use cases: autonomous driving, valet parking, VTC, new collective or shared mobility services, public transport, last-mile delivery. These experiments are spread throughout the territory, and cover situations in urban, peri-urban and rural areas.

VEDECOM mission: to feed a common good on autonomous vehicle

The results of the SAM project will make it possible to feed a common good, a set of knowledge whose pooling and sharing with public authorities benefit the development of public policies and the construction of a state of the art, particularly in terms of safety, impacts and acceptability.

VEDECOM plays a central role in coordinating evaluations, both methodologically and operationally. He is also the leader of the consortium’s activities related to data: definition of formats, collection schemes and availability, and contributes directly to the evaluation of the experiments, on all the evaluation areas constituting the research perimeter of the project:

A scientific collaborative approach

SAM’s scientific approach, which is essentially collaborative, is based on the exploitation of experimental data collected on experimental sites, and on the joint use of models and simulation tools to understand the possible impacts of scaling up.

This scientific approach is the result of close collaboration between the project’s academic partners. The following are thus involved in the evaluation work: