Four-Year European Autonomous Project Launched
A four-year project to explore the practical application of driverless vehicles on European roads has begun.
The European Union-funded Horizon Europe project ROADVIEW hopes to strengthen the continent’s competence in automated driving by concentrating on operating efficiently in different weather and traffic scenarios. A consortium of 16 partners are taking part in the Robust Automated Driving in Extreme Weather (ROADVIEW) project, which aims at developing more robust and cost-efficient in-vehicle perception and decision-making systems for connected and automated vehicles. The project has a total budget of €10M ($9.9M) and focuses on enhancing the performance of autonomous vehicles under harsh weather conditions and congested traffic environments.
Some of the innovations in the project are the integration of SAE Level 4 software modules across different vehicle platforms, as well as the use of advanced tools for X-in-the-loop simulation and testing. One of the consortium is the specialist in all-weather SAE Level 4 full-stack software for automated vehicles, Sensible 4. It supports the consortium with the standardization roadmap, strategic partnerships and future exploitation of project results.
José Camposano, project manager, said: “This project strengthens our existing competence in all-weather driving and it is closely aligned to our product roadmap for the next four years. It will enable further improvements to our technology and provide new opportunities to test it across different sites, together with a highly innovative consortium of research and industrial partners.”
Harri Santamala, CEO of Sensible 4, added: “We focus on three market segments for our automated driving software: industrial transportation, last-mile shuttles and delivery of cargo and goods. All of the use cases require the capability to support even the most challenging weather conditions, such as snow or rain. On the other hand, vehicles need to be able to drive on different kinds of ground surfaces, like gravel, asphalt or icy road, without lane markings. ROADVIEW is one way for us to support European competence in the field of automated vehicles to work where ever and whenever.” The company has expertise in testing in varying weather conditions, for example in Finnish Lapland, Tampere, and Northern Norway, Oslo area and Gjesdal.
— Paul Myles is a seasoned automotive journalist based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @Paulmyles_
