CORDIS

The project "Safe and COnnected aUtomation in road Transport" (SCOUT) is a Coordination and Support Action of the European Commission, which started in July 2016 and is lasting for 2 years, until 30 June 2018. The project aims at identifying pathways for an accelerated proliferation of safe and connected high-degree automated driving in Europe, taking into account user needs and expectations, technical and non-technical gaps and risks, viable business models as well as international cooperation and competition. Furthermore, a advice for policies and regulatory frameworks for safe and connected automation will be derived and subsumed into a cross-sectorial roadmap aiming to implement the vision for “Safe and connected automation in road transport 2030”.

Connected and automated driving (CAD) promises a variety of socio-economic benefits, starting from increase road safety towards increased productivity (regarding individuals as well as delivery services), improvements of social inclusion and energy savings. Connectivity will further expand the performance of vehicles towards highly and even fully automated vehicles. To be safe, connectivity is one of the main requirements for higher levels of automated driving to ensure a sufficient communication between infrastructure, vehicles (also among themselves) and other road users. However, connectivity will also introduce concerns regarding cyber security and data privacy.

The overall objectives are to capture expectations and concerns, explore feasible use case for connected and automated driving, analyse gaps and risks, identify sustainable business models, create common cross-sectorial roadmaps and advise policies and regulatory frameworks as well as monitor international trends and tie-in the results of European funded R&D projects and activities.

The analysis started from a thorough consideration of the concerns and expectations from the perspectives of users, suppliers of the technology and experiences from projects and field tests. With regard to the perceived use cases for connected automation in road transport, technical und non-technical gaps and risks for the implementation will be identified, assessed and ranked. In parallel, sustainable business models have identified with particular emphasis on the role of digitization, connectivity and data-driven business cases.

The expectation, goals and reservation of different stakeholders regarding CAD have been analysed and use cases covering different steps towards full automation have been evaluated and combined in an interdependency matrix.

Vision of connected and automated driving in 2030:
Based on the use cases developed and completed by different stakeholder involvement a vision has been created. This process has started with a context map development, analysing trends, societal, political and economic factors and technologies shaping connected and automated driving in 2030. The vision has been further specified and completed with precise solution.

The state of the art of the technical as well as legal layer regarding CAD has been analysed divided into “sense”, “think” and “act” technologies as well as including, security, and communication and connectivity aspects. The analysis performed show that there is still lots of R&D effort required to make the step from “driver as fall-back level” (SAE Level 2) to “system as fall-back level” (SAE level 3+).
By adding the layer of connectivity to the vehicles, another layer regarding security is automatically added. This topic is still at a level, which needs further development to meet all required security standards.
Regarding legal frameworks the following conclusions can be drawn: Although first amendments are already implemented to keep up with the technical development of automated and connected driving and to facilitate various ADAS functions, it is essential to further adapt laws globally and in each EU member state.

Based on a selection of use cases novel business models have been developed. The business model analysis showed that the expertise of many different stakeholders with specific competencies is needed for the successful implementation of novel business models, showing the relevance of the formation of strategic alliances of relevant stakeholders. Furthermore, the overall vision of mobility as a service will not only affect the car manufacturing industry. It will also rearrange the system of urban public transport and therefore requires the collaboration with public and national traffic management and infrastructure operators.

A coherent funding strategy for Connected & Automated Driving will accelerate progress in deployment of (CAD). A prerequisite for this is an analysis of existing EU, national and international funding programmes for the development and implementation of connected and automated driving technologies. Therefore the currently available funding budgets on European, national and international level has been analysed in light of the global competition.
European funding in Horizon 2020 and the Connecting Europe Facility amounts to approx. €240 million per year together. In comparison, the US spends around USD137 million (€122 million) per year for research related to CAD. Japan invests JPY2.45 billion (€20 million) annually in CAD related to the major funding programme (SIP-ADUS). In China, the “Made in China 2025” programme, the equivalent to Europe’s “Industry 4.0”, is a USD300 billion-heavy programme that also partially tackles CAD.

The main ambition and expected result of the SCOUT project is to create a common cross-sectorial roadmap pointing out what needs to be done in all relevant domains to speed up the profileration of safe and connected high-degree automated driving in Europe, taking into account user needs, concerns and expectations, gaps and risks, viable business models as well as the international cooperation and competition, which have and will be developed in the content related work packages.

With this, the roadmap will support European leadership in the development of automated driving by making recommendations for technological progress in current and new directions. It will strengthen the European ecosystem of connected and automated driving by recommending policies and actions to drive the harmonized installation of regulatory frameworks and standardization. Furthermore, the roadmap will identify potential roles at public and private side for the implementation.

The expected impacts include the reduction of the automated driving systems' development costs, as well as raising competitiveness of the European industry in developing breakthrough technological solutions. Furthermore, improved efficiency, safety and traffic flow through better use of the existing infrastructure capacity, and reduction of emissions. Additionally, the project is expected to further increase the visibility of connected and automated driving and with this also increase the user acceptance, which in turn accelerates the implementation of connected and automated driving.

Finally, connected and automated driving promises a variety of socio-economic benefits, starting from increased road safety towards increased productivity (regarding individuals as well as delivery services), improvements of social inclusion and energy savings.