Feb 1, 2021
Alexander Frötscher, infrastructure and data expert, talks about ICT4CART and AustriaTech's role in the project as part of the ICT4CART interview series. He also gives an outlook on how automated driving can be realized on the roads and what obstacles still need to be overcome. AustriaTech acts as national contact point for connected and automated driving and actively informs about day one C-ITS services and validates them on the road.
AustriaTech is active in many work packages of ICT4CART. Taking part in the specification and review of all four-use cases in the project, AustriaTech has provided requirements in fields of Cyber Security and Hybrid Connectivity (as a combination of cellular based and wireless short range communication). In the specification phase of the system architecture, AustriaTech took part in the review of the infrastructure elements. AustriaTech will be among the many partners in ICT4Cart to test the architecture at Test sites in Austria and in the cross-border site between Austria and Italy. As part of ICT4CART’s dissemination strategy, AustriaTech is involved in stakeholder engagement. The strategy contains the forming of an Advisory Board, a group of experts of project relevant areas, who are sharing their expertise to guide the consortium. Furthermore, research projects, automotive & ICT companies as well as universities form the broader group of stakeholders.
The first steps towards autonomous driving on real road networks are currently performed with the day one C-ITS services rolled out in Europe and extended with additional day 1.5 messages targeted to areas like platooning of vehicles or advanced vehicle assistance for merging situations. Secondly dissemination takes an important role to create public awareness for C-ITS and the development towards automated driving. As described above, approaching key stakeholders is a first step to forming a common knowledge base.
As first step, it is important to settle for common service definitions, which are specified and valid in the whole EU, accessible and openly available as complete communication profiles. Furthermore, the limits of cellular networks must be taken into consideration. In the second step, use cases, which stand for possible traffic scenarios, are defined and agreed. Additionally, the network implementations and handover procedures must be agreed on in the EU.
In order to establish a market structure, strong support from road infrastructure operators is needed as well as contributions from a solid base of day one information service among others. As of now, the first series of vehicle models are already fully connected and C-ITS equipped. Not only do they support the Day 1 Service set, they are also extending this features to mass market vehicles and will hereby boost the interaction between infrastructures and vehicle fleets in the near future.
The entire interview is available at ICT4CART.
