Nov 22, 2021
The EU project ICT4CART has been working for more than three years on how connected and automated vehicles can be better integrated into the mobility system through technological advances. During the ITS World Conference 2021 in Hamburg, the results were presented at the ICT4CART final event.
On 15th October 2021, the consortium of the EU-funded ICT4CART project held its final event at the ITS World Congress in Hamburg. 21 partners from nine European countries have joined forces to create a sustainable future for connected and automated vehicles by adapting and enhancing technological advances from the telecommunication, automotive and IT industries. During the event, the consortium presented its findings and highlighted the activities at the four pilot sites in Austria, Germany, Italy and the Italian-Austrian border. This demonstrated how the solutions would improve the daily lives of EU citizens while creating new market opportunities for large companies and SMEs.
The aim of the ICT4CART project was to develop, implement and test a versatile ICT infrastructure to enable a transition to a higher level of automation (up to L4) under real-life conditions. The ICT4CART technology addresses existing gaps and works with specific ICT key elements, namely hybrid connectivity, data management, cybersecurity, privacy and accurate localisation. From an EU perspective, this has also highlighted the benefits of self-driving cars, the progress made in automated driving research and the importance that automated road transport and Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) play. Likewise, successes in terms of performance and reliability, such as the successful tests of hybrid communication in the German, Italian and Austrian test areas, were achieved as part of the project activities. In the area of data and IT services, the implementation of data exchange components and management services as well as the implementation of services in different use cases such as parking services, fleet management services or adaptation of the level of automation in vehicles were presented, among others.
The presentation of the results from the different pilot sites was particularly interesting: For example, at the German test site in Ulm, traffic in the surrounding area was "made visible" in urban areas by using a virtual mirror. Thanks to the environment model of the developed infrastructure, the latter makes hidden road users "visible" to the networked automated vehicle. In addition, several use cases were investigated in the Italian pilot project, such as the detection of parking violations, the merging of lanes or toll booths and queues. With tests conducted both on the motorway (A22 in Trento) and in an urban environment (city of Verona), the Italian pilot covered a very wide range of cases to further improve CAD. The full hybrid WiFi-based ITS-G5 coverage on the Italian and Austrian test sites will remain after the end of the project. This will bring lasting benefits to the region and equip it for a future with automated and connected driving. However, the tests have also shown that the data content of the traffic management centres needs to be further developed to support future higher levels of automation.
More information can be found here.
