Laying the foundation for a European automated road transport roadmap
The ART community faces important challenges and gaps, requiring a uniform approach to R&D, testing and deployment. Furthermore, effective integration and coordination with policy-making is required to prevent fragmented rules and procedures. The EU-funded CARTRE project sought to accelerate ART development and deployment by increasing market and policy certainties. “It supported the development of clearer, more consistent policies in EU Member States to ensure that ART systems and services are interoperable and implemented in a coherent way across Europe,” says coordinator Dr Stéphane Dreher. Stakeholder Forum for the advancement of ART CARTRE gathered key public and private stakeholders from the automotive, infrastructure, ICT and service provision sectors involved in CAD. “They exchanged experiences and knowledge about past and ongoing project results at national, European and international levels to avoid replication and built consensus for harmonised CAD deployment in Europe,” he adds. Project partners defined deployment paths and identified challenges, drivers, influencing factors, and future research needs for CAD across Europe in 10 thematic areas. These include policy and regulation needs, safety validation and road worthiness testing, digital and physical infrastructure, and in-vehicle technology. Additional thematic areas concerned socioeconomic assessment and sustainability, plus user and societal awareness and acceptance. The consortium produced position papers in all 10 areas, which reflect the collective position of contributing stakeholders. The papers were used to update the ERTRAC Roadmap on Automated Driving and the Strategic Transport Research and Innovation Agenda on Connected and Automated Transport in 2017 and 2018, respectively. CARTRE team members delivered a global overview and analysis that includes roadmaps, action plans, pilots and test sites from EU Member States. They analysed over 50 roadmaps and more than 80 pilot and test sites. The result is a synopsis of topics that need to be further examined in a more harmonised and precise way to support authorities and cities in developing future roadmaps and action plans. Coordinating and harmonising European and global ART approaches Several meetings between the European Commission, the United States and Japan supported information exchange, and identified needs for collaboration on common issues. Two high-profile events promoted European research in ART. CARTRE was responsible for co-organising the first European conference on CAD and an interactive symposium. The ARCADE project is building on the successful outcomes of CARTRE. It will leverage the CAD stakeholder community and provide a forum to exchange lessons learnt and best practices. ARCADE aims to extend international cooperation with other countries identified as taking on a leading role in ART development, while contributing to the ongoing trilateral EU-US-Japan cooperation efforts. It will further develop the existing knowledge base on the state of the art in European R&D vehicle automation activities and build up synergies and shared views on deployment scenarios and research needs for CAD. ARCADE is co-organiser of the 2nd European Conference on CAD to be held in Brussels in April. Participants will include political leaders from the Commission and Member States with high-level representatives from industry and road authorities to discuss all the major challenges related to automated mobility.
Keywords
ARCADE, CARTRE, automated road transport (ART), CAD, transport
