The future of Connected, Cooperative & Automated Mobility (CCAM) builds upon international cooperation and cross-border partnerships. The development of technologies and frameworks for enhancing and deploying automated mobility calls for systemising international collaboration. ERTICO is paving the way forward to accelerate automation and connectivity for safer and smarter by actively engaging in several global cooperation platforms.
Earlier this month, Dr Stephane Dreher, Senior Manager of Innovation & Deployment at ERTICO, participated in the SIP-adus Workshop, a yearly gathering that has been taking place in Japan since 2014. This year, the city of Kyoto hosted the Workshop in cooperation with Doshisha University.
A European perspective on deploying Interoperable Connected & Automated Driving
The Workshop attracts world-leading experts from the field of CCAM and close to 500 attendees joined from over 18 countries. They exchanged views and expertise on how to develop, implement, and promote automated driving technologies. Dr Dreher had the opportunity to take the floor during the “Regional Activities” session and discussed the CCAM European Framework for the coordination of Research & Innovation, and Testing. In particular, he pointed out the need for a coherent European framework for the deployment of interoperable connected and automated driving. He also presented some European projects in which ERTICO is involved, including the newly launched project FAME, and shared the lessons learned within the European environment to intensify cooperation within this sector.
A reference to the recently launched SUNRISE project could not be missing in the land of the rising sun. IDIADA’s Mr Stefan De Vries, SUNRISE project coordinator, presented the project during a session on “Safety Assurance” and introduced the Consortium’s vision for the development of a harmonised and scalable CCAM Safety Assurance Framework. He highlighted the importance of international cooperation in ensuring that relevant stakeholders around the world adopt the results that the project seek to achieve and allow faster and more efficient deployment of CCAM technologies.
SUNRISE to collaborate with SAKURA and VVMethods
ERTICO is leading SUNRISE’s Work Package on dissemination and international cooperation and always strives to expand the outreaching of projects such as SUNRISE and FAME. Dr. Dreher is supporting the European Commission in advancing on international cooperation and, being involved in the Trilateral EU-US-Japan Automation in Road Transportation (ART) cooperation framework, has the possibility of enhancing the international cooperation in the CCAM sector. Therefore, the meeting with VVmethods and SAKURA representatives on the side of the SIP-adus conference he participated to was a unique occasion to initiate the outreaching effort of the SUNRISE project and exchange on the first steps of cooperation.
VVmethods is a project supported by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action that deals with the development of a framework and methods for the safety assessment of automated vehicles in urban environments. The project deals with the challenge of developing a complete evidence-based safety architecture and framework. It also aims at framing a data- and knowledge-based validation technique to transfer highway scenarios (PEGASUS project) to urban environments. SAKURA (Safety Assurance KUdos for Reliable Autonomous vehicles) is a project funded by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that aims at gathering and analysing data to create new safety evaluation methods in Connected and Automated Mobility. This project seeks to create a methodology defining reasonably foreseeable safety scenarios based on real traffic data.
The meeting focused on establishing a common and cooperative path for the three projects in order to share the latest progress and exchange research ideas. This first exchange between the three projects involved representatives from DLR, Fraunhofer, TUBS, and JARI. The collaboration will ensure the wide scope the SUNRISE project needs in order to achieve its goal, which is to create a common Safety Assurance Framework for Connected and Automated mobility systems.
