EGNSS-ENABLED SMART ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE USAGE AND MAINTENANCE FOR INCREASED ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND SAFETY ON EUROPEAN ROAD NETWORKS

Project Information

ESRIUM

Grant agreement ID: 101004181

DOI

10.3030/101004181

Project closed

EC signature date 9 November 2020

Start date 1 December 2020

End date 30 November 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Space

Total cost

€ 3 410 893,75

EU contribution

€ 3 000 000,00

Coordinated by

JOANNEUM RESEARCH FORSCHUNGSGESELLSCHAFT MBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ESRIUM (EGNSS-ENABLED SMART ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE USAGE AND MAINTENANCE FOR INCREASED ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND SAFETY ON EUROPEAN ROAD NETWORKS)

Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ESRIUM was a multi-national project with the common goal to increase the safety and resource efficiency of mobility on the road. The key innovation was the creation of a homogeneous, accurate and recent digital map of road surface damage and road wear. Further addressed as “road wear map”, it contains unique information, which is of value to multiple stakeholders: road operators are able to lower the road maintenance effort by optimal planning. Further, road operators are able to lower road wear and increase traffic safety especially for heavy vehicles: considering the market introduction of partly automated truck fleets and platoons, the precise track of these vehicles can be adjusted by communicating precise routing recommendations in- and cross-lane. Truck fleet operators following these recommendations can receive tolling benefits, and increase the general safety for their vehicle fleet. Especially with the increasing levels of autonomy, systems will utilize infrastructure support to handle the requirements of the automated driving task and additional external requests. In ESRIUM, these opportunities were addressed by utilizing C-ITS infrastructure and EGNSS based localization in planning the trajectories of such automated vehicles.
Key to the ESRIUM innovation is a precision localization service, which provides reliable locations of road damages and of the vehicles using the roads. Considering a European-level business-case, only Galileo may provide such a service in homogeneous quality, even at very remote locations on the European continent.
The project was finalized successfully. An affordable data acquisition platform was designed, road wear detection and classification as well as prediction algorithms were developed and the desired road wear map is available. An accurate and authenticated EGNSS localisation and the C-ITS communication was established. Usability and acceptance of the system were evaluated, detailed business cases defined and results disseminated via various channels.
Due to an appropriate risk handling and the active interaction with the external reviewers and the POs all goals could be reached as anticipated. The outcome builds a solid basis for future work bringing the results forward to finally result in a commercially usable solution. This was also already confirmed by a quite positive feedback of a submitted follow-up proposal 2023 describing the plan to test ESRIUM on a large scale basis.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A public webpage has been set up for the project by the WP6 leader ENI. This website contains general information on the project, information on the public deliverables and links to the social media accounts for the project so that the public can follow our progress https://esrium.eu/.
All project results and dissemination activities are documented there.
In addition all public deliverables as well as created publications are available for download.#

Overall 35 deliverables were produced, 14 of them public.
All 22 Milestones were reached. Mostly within the anticipated timeframe. Minor delays were not within the consortiums influence and handled following the set up risk management. All deviations could be compensated until the end of the project.

Key results of the project:
Road Wear Sensor System (TRL 6)
- Sensor hardware platform mountable on most vans
- Geometric platform calibration algorithms
- Synchronized EGNSS data and stereo image data
- Efficient and compact computing platform and corresponding software to store data in real-time
- Open source OSNMA implementation (FGI-OSNMA)
Data Management Platform (TRL 6)
- Database system for storing, managing and distributing road damage data
- Interfaces for exchanging data sets following industry standards
- 3D and 2D Visualization system
Road Wear Map Creation (TRL 6)
- Defect detection and classification
- Geo-referencing of detections
- Digital representation of road surface
Road Wear Prediction System (TRL 6-7)
- Prediction of road wear evolution over time (limited by missing historical data)
- Inclusion of third party data (weather and traffic) was essential
In-Vehicle Localization System (TRL 6-7)
- Accurate (4-14 cm) and OSNMA-secured positioning
- Tested in urban, extra urban and motorway environments
- Performance analysis in the context of automated driving systems
- Comparison of single/multi-antenna configurations as well as different receiver and constellation settings
- Comparison of different RTK-correction provision methods
In-Vehicle Navigation Interface (TRL 6)
- In-vehicle HMI for driver information and public road demonstrations
- NDS Live and TPEG services: Gaps related to definitions of localization systems and road surface condition categories had been identified.
- Modification of standards is initiated
Decision Support Interface (TRL 5)
- C-ITS IVI service (trucks & personal cars are differentiated)#

Performed tests:
Performance tests
- End-user positioning system performance assessment in Finland and Austria
- C-ITS communication tests in Austria
- Tests for comparison of RTK provision through C-ITS
- Analysis of automated trajectory following with and without OSNMA
- Public automated driving tests on the Austrian A2 motorway for in-lane offset and lane change recommendations provided by the C-ITS network
Usability tests
- Public automated driving tests on the Austrian A2 motorway for in-lane offset and lane change recommendations
Acceptance tests
- User acceptance studies involving manual driven trucks and professional truck drivers indicate benefits and positive acceptance of the ESRIUM routing recommendations
- Use acceptance tests with road operators (traffic management and asset management) indicate high user acceptance for the whole ESRIUM system
- Impact Assessment identified significant economic benefits for EU-27 countries

Dissemination Highlights:
- Two main project presentations within larger events
- Three special interest sessions
- Exhibitions and Demos: 5 ESRIUM only and 7 shared

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

All objectives in ESRIUM were reached:
• Create a highly detailed EGNSS-referenced “wear map”
• Create a novel mid-priced sensor system for detecting road damage
• Broadcast precision routing recommendations
• Broadcast potentially dangerous locations
• Implement EGNSS- localization system, which provides accurate, authenticated position information in real-time and at low cost
• Provide road damage state and evolution to the customer
• Develop a business-case based on the ESRIUM services
• Demonstrate smart automated routing based on broadcasted information

The development of all prototypes was finalized reaching a TRL level between 6 and 7.
Their usage, acceptance and functionality was demonstrated and the technology presented to stakeholders and relevant scientific communities.
Several publications show that the development was well beyond the state of the art and the resulting business plan discusses the economic impact.
Besides the technical developments also environmental influences were analysed.
A follow-up project will include the increase of the current TRL level closing still open gaps and thus, prepare the ESRIUM solution for the market.

Use Case 2 - Routing Recommendations within and between lanes based on the road wear map

ESRIUM products and services

Use Case 1 - AI-based road damage prediction to support enhanced road maintenance planning

Use Case 3 - C-ITS Message ‘GNSS-correction data’ provision

ESRIUM Sensor platform

ESRIUM system components

Use Case 4 - Wear-map content provision