The emerging fields of Highly Autonomous Driving (HAD) and Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) require vehicles to localize themselves with accurately regardless of roadside scenarios, weather conditions, traffic flow, etc. In addition, knowledge of accurate geographical location is a critical enabler to many services, ranging from safety to infotainment/marketing. Unfortunately, satellite-based positioning systems are unable to provide sufficiently accurate position information for such applications especially in certain challenging yet common environments such as urban canyons and tunnels. HIGHTS addressed this problem by combining traditional satellite systems with an innovative use of on-board sensing and cooperative wireless communication technologies (e.g. Wi-Fi, ITS-G5, UWB tracking, Zigbee, Bluetooth and LTE) to produce advanced, highly-accurate positioning solutions for Cooperative-Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS). The results are to be integrated into the service layer of ETSI C-ITS architecture and the future European-wide C-ITS Platform, and will thus become available for all C-ITS applications. The project went beyond ego- and infrastructure-based positioning by incorporating them along with cooperative communication and ranging as building blocks to an European-Wide positioning Service Platform (EWSP) based on enhanced Local Dynamic Maps and built on open European standards.
CONCLUSION OF THE ACTION
Within section 1.1 of the DoA, HIGHTS has defined 4 main objectives summarized below along with the description of their grade of achievement:
1 - To enable wide growth of new emerging Business and Use-Cases through the creation of enhanced localization algorithms.
* HIGHTS produced a set of Business and Use-Case Analysis for high-precision location-based services which were publicized in two deliverables (D2.1 and D2.3 respectively).
* In addition, HIGHTS developed 4 cooperative positioning algorithms and data fusion schemes, which were integrated into the EWPSP.
* The EWPSP demonstrated the usage of the aforementioned algorithms into selected business and use-cases. A video illustrating the EWPSP can be view at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUiJzH9znMY(opens in new window)2 - To increase road safety and traffic efficiency.
* A series of specific Use-Cases for the protection of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) as well as for platooning were defined, along with the architecture and selected the technologies that, through the EWSPS, can be used to enhance road safety. The main concept of the EWPSP is “resilience”, since the platform is able to provide under any scenario the best possible set of algorithms and technologies for highly accurate localization.
* The EWSPS approach superseded the original target of the Call, by extending beyond the improvement of localization accuracy towards a more comprehensive best-possible "solution on-demand" for high accuracy location technology on the road.
3 - Integration into the Local Dynamic Map (LDM) of Facility layer functions in the ITS-S by providing recommendations to the related Cooperative-ITS standardization bodies.
* The extensions of the LDM and message formats required by cooperative localization algorithms developed within the project are currently under discussion into European (ETSI) and world-wide (IEEE) standardization bodies.
4 - To realize an European-wide positioning service platform based on enhanced Local Dynamic Maps
* The EWPSP was originally drafted from the architectural point of view, completed in a descriptive fashion, and finally implementation and integrated for the PoC held in Helmond test track.
