On the road to automated transport with ERTICO at the Automated Road Transportation Symposium

The 2023 TRB annual Automated Road Transportation Symposium (ARTS) is taking place on July 9-13, in San Francisco. The symposium brings together thought leaders from industry, government, and research communities from around the world to discuss the ongoing research and development, technological progress, and the deployment results related to road transport automation. Dr Stephane Dreher, Senior Manager of Innovation and Development at ERTICO, is attending the event in California to talk about the state of play of CCAM in the EU, the CCAM partnership updates and some of our CCAM-related projects.

Last month, Road Vehicle Automation 10, a volume based on presentations and breakout sessions during ARTS22, which was held last July, was published as part of the Springer Nature Group’s Lecture Notes in Mobility series. The publication reflects the important part that ERTICO projects within the Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) focus area play in the exchange of knowledge and information at the Symposium.

ERTICO at ARTS22

Dr Stephane Dreher, coordinator of the FAME project, which aims to solidify the methodology for the organisation and evaluation of large-scale demonstrations to enable scale-ups and maximise the full impact of CCAM solutions, was at the ARTS last year. His active participation in the Symposium is captured in the recently released volume by way of two papers that present essential elements of CCAM Research & Innovation in Europe. The first paper, entitled Innovation Strategies and Research Trends for Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility in Europe, explores the challenges and solutions within the European CCAM ecosystem. It emphasises coordination, cross-sector stakeholder engagement, and the role of the CCAM Partnership in driving progress. The FAME project’s efforts in supporting this ecosystem through knowledge exchange and international collaboration are also highlighted.

The second paper, Automated Vehicle Testing & Data Collection Efforts, focuses on the aspects of testing and data collection for automated vehicles. Dr Dreher collaborates with international experts to provide insights into Automated Driving Systems data acquisition and mobility data sharing platforms, the Data Sharing Framework (from past initiatives and projects like FESTA, CARTRE, ARCADE), which now will serve as the basis in the FAME project to develop a Test Data Space to facilitate sharing of data from CCAM testing across projects in EU. Also covered were other platforms that facilitate data sharing such as DFRS, which aims to support the ITS regulations and improve road safety, and the common European mobility data space (EMDS) developments in the EU in terms of the current PrepDSpace4Mobility inventory action. Results from significant projects such as HEADSTART also round up the paper’s coverage of solutions for testing the safety and reliability of automated road transport.

ERTICO at ARTS23

This year again, Dr Dreher is participating in the ARTS in San Francisco highlighting FAME’s commitment to international collaboration. The project endeavours to strengthen ties with partners from around the world, engaging in fruitful knowledge exchange and cooperative efforts to tackle shared challenges in CCAM. Partners in FAME’s consortium have been supporting the ARTS organisation for several years now by bringing EU experts into the sessions and establishing contacts between similar research initiatives in the EU and US. In particular, the project has been supporting the trilateral EU-US Japan cooperation in ARTS but is now also focussing on identifying cooperation opportunities more globally with the objective to establish concrete cooperation areas and counterparts in several world regions (Asia, Middle East, South America), fostering a global approach to CCAM advancements.

At the ARTS this year, another of ERTICO’s projects, SUNRISE, will also be represented by its coordinator Stefan de Vries from Applus IDIADA. The project will use this opportunity to expand its network, which is a key objective in its aim to create a safety assurance framework for CCAM.

Stay up to date with the project’s developments in the area of cooperative, connected and automated mobility via the project websites and through the FAME Knowledge Base.