The ERTICO-led 5G-MOBIX project was on show in the month of April with live demonstrations at three participating country trial sites in The Netherlands, France and Finland. In each instance, project partners exhibited their experiences and results trialing and implementing 5G-enabled Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) services and functionalities.
5G-MOBIX addresses cross-border challenges in using 5G for automated driving, with each project site tasked with demonstrating different applications and user stories. Advanced CAM use cases, such as remote driving, depend on an uninterrupted 5G service with demanding quality of service requirements. These requirements underline the necessity for solutions that ensure service continuity for vehicles on the roads both at cross-border areas and within a nation’s borders.
Common use case categories across each trial site location include remote driving, extended sensors, advanced driving, and vehicle Quality of Service (QoS) support, which refers to the use of mechanisms or technologies that work on a network to control traffic and ensure the performance of critical applications with limited network capacity.
Dutch partners perform an interurban demo
The Netherlands trial site event took place in an interurban setting at the Automotive Campus in Helmond on 5 April 2022, where live demonstrations with automated vehicles were conducted. Presentations were made by KPN, TNO, TU Eindhoven and VTT, and additional support for the demonstrations was provided by Siemens and AIIM. Attendees, including representatives from public authorities, SMEs, academic and research institutions enjoyed CCAM scenarios which exhibited cooperative collision avoidance, extended sensors with Cooperative Perception Messages (CPM) and remote driving using 5G positioning.
Multiple use cases showcased near Versailles
On April 21, Institut VEDECOM hosted a demonstration of several use cases in a simulated environment. Attendees witnessed how an advanced mobile network can assist autonomous vehicles to achieve actions such as entering a motorway from an access ramp, manage a change of lane and, perhaps most importantly, manage in near real time to warn of a danger on the road.
Consulting and engineering firm Akka Technologies, equipment manufacturer Valeo, and the satellite specialist Catapult organized the event, which brought together manufacturers from the automotive and aeronautics sectors, but also operators of infrastructure and services in the mobility ecosystem, academic research establishments and local authorities in Île-de-France.
Finland tests remote driving and extended sensors
Finland trial site demo attendees witnessed a live demonstration of remote driving in open campus roads with support of connectivity from a 5G multi-network (multi-PLMN) environment. The remote driving trials were conducted on 28 April in the Aalto University (Otaniemi Campus), with an autonomous vehicle traveling on campus roads with mixed traffic and with various road occupants, such as cars, bicycles, scooters and pedestrians.
“The Finland trial site experimentally tested how leveraging of multiple 5G networks with overlapping coverage footprint could provide enhancements in terms of service continuity and meet the needs of a demanding remote driving use case for a vehicle with high-level of automation,” said Edward Mutafungwa, Aalto University.
Trial site partners from Aalto University and Sensible4 organized the demos for attendees, which included local regulators, municipalities, vehicular solution vendors, operators, public funding bodies and researchers.
Cross-Border Site Testing
The Dutch, French and Finnish 5G-MOBIX trial site demos, as well as those conducted in Germany, China and South Korea, all brought complementary insights into the cross-border challenges that were addressed at the Greece-Turkey (GR-TK) border trial site and will be addressed at the Spain-Portugal (ES-PT) border.
On 10 May, the 5G-MOBIX GR-TK Corridor site team presented their results and showcased the impact of the tested solutions utilizing the ‘See What I see’ functionality for trucks driving in platoon formation, as well as for remote vehicle inspection, predictive risk assessment and automated truck routing into customs. The complete story can be found here on the 5G-MOBIX website.
Together with the results from all trial sites, these cross-border demos will help the 5G-MOBIX consortium determine the impact of cross-border 5G frequency coordination approaches and to understand the real-time traffic considerations needed for successful future CAM deployment.
5G-MOBIX has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 825496.
