Tag: CCAM

Watch now: LEVITATE freight case studies webinar

News

Nearly 40 persons attended the LEVITATE webinar focusing on freight, which took place on 31 January 2022. Two freight case studies presented by researchers from LEVITATE partner, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), were complemented by a contribution from the logistics platform ALICE, with which LEVITATE is cooperating in terms of sharing knowledge and dissemination activities.

The first of the LEVITATE freight case studies, presented by Bin Hu of AIT, covered an automated parcels delivery system in urban areas, for which the city of Vienna provided the test area. The main conclusions suggest that:

  • Electric vehicles will reduce the (local) emissions, but not the mileage
  • Consolidation reduces both, but is difficult to implement
  • Automation facilitates consolidation and reduces operating costs

The second freight case study addressed the impacts of truck platooning on urban bridges and was introduced by Marian Ralbovsky, AIT.  The following conclusions were reached:

  • Truck platooning can significantly impact urban highway bridges
  • Effects depend on traffic composition (portion of trucks in traffic)
  • Mostly only bridges with large spans (river crossings) are expected to be affected
  • Intelligent access control can ensure bridge safety under platooned traffic

The final presentation was given by Fernando Liesa, Secretary General of Alice, which is a European Technology Platform bringing together stakeholders from the logistics sector. Fernando shared some of the main findings from projects and members activities that are relevant to CCAM. Among the useful insights provided are:

  • According to a survey by the Award project on incentives to use automated trucks, the most popular answer was ‘improve vehicle utilisation’
  • The shortage of truck drivers is a problem that CCAM may be able to help address

The ‘freight case studies webinar’ webinar recording can be found on this web page and directly on YouTube »

Working paper on the road safety impacts of CCAM

News

LEVITATE aims to forecast impacts of developments related to Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM). Impacts are estimated for different so-called ‘sub use cases’ (SUCs) that reflect applications or interventions which can be implemented by policy makers. The impacts for the sub use cases are estimated by comparing the situation with intervention to the situation without intervention, i.e., the baseline scenario. The baseline scenario reflects the starting point for which increasing penetration levels of first cautious and later more ambitious automated vehicles (CAVs) are estimated over time. One of the relevant impact areas of CCAM is road safety.

This working document prepared by SWOV discusses in which way road safety is impacted by increasing penetration levels of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and 2) quantifies the road safety impacts of increasing penetration levels of CAVs as far as possible.

Read the working paper Road safety related impacts within the Levitate project »

LEVITATE participation in the ICTR conference, Rhodes, 2021

News

Authors: Apostolos Ziakopoulos (NTUA), Maria Oikonomou (NTUA), Julia Roussou (NTUA), George Yannis (NTUA)

  1. General information

The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) and the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT/CERTH) co-organized the 10th International Congress on Transportation Research (ICTR 2021), which was held on September 1st – 3rd 2021, at the Mediterranean Hotel in Rhodes, Greece. The spotlight theme of the 2021 Congress was “Future Mobility and Resilient Transport: Transition to innovation” (https://ictr.gr/). LEVITATE was represented in the conference by NTUA (https://www.nrso.ntua.gr/).

  1. CCAM workshop – Challenges & Lessons learned,
    Wednesday, September 1st, 2021, (09:00 – 13:30).

The Conference started with a series of workshops, one of which was devoted to CCAM, titled Challenges & Lessons Learned in CCAM, organized by SHOW Innovation Action (https://show-project.eu/) and in specific by the Technical Management team of the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT) of CERTH. There were 12 presentations made – some of which originated from regular papers of the Conference and some of which being invited speeches – whereas the workshop closed with a round table. The work presented originated from SPACE, SHOW, AVENUE, WISE-ACT, Drive2theFuture, Trustonomy, SUaaVE, ICT4CART, EIMANTRA, LEVITATE, SPROUT and ARCADE initiatives as well as from CCAM Platform WG3.

NTUA represented LEVITATE actively in the CCAM workshop (i) with a presentation by Apostolos Ziakopoulos titled “Forecasting and backcasting of Connected Automated Vehicle impacts using multiple methodological inputs” (ii) with the participation and contributions of Professor George Yannis to the roundtable discussion of eight renowned experts.

Critical outcomes of the presentation include the reality that the integration of the expectations of different users (City/road management authorities, researchers, industrial practitioners) in a functional Policy Support Tool remains an uphill battle. Furthermore, backcasting capabilities for impact assessment provide a powerful means to complement forecasting and to define visions & goals to be reached. Large degrees of uncertainty remain for the CCAM landscape regarding the scope, form & feasibility of automation-based policy interventions. The combination of multiple methodologies for CCAM impact assessment brings considerable advantages (increased parameter coverage) but is hard to integrate different variable dependencies and requires high level coordination.

  1. Session II (A) – Intelligent Transport Systems,
    Thursday, September 2nd, 2021, (14:30 – 16:30).

Session II (A) Advanced Intelligent Transport systems can improve current transportation systems both for passenger and freight. For the successful implementation of ITS in real conditions, it is critical to gather and combine different types of data (infrastructure-based, real time traffic data, as well as other open-source, dynamic or static data). Overall, CAVs are considered as a promising solution towards the improvement of the current traffic conditions. However, several simulation studies presented at this session indicated that no significant differences in terms of traffic-related parameters are expected. In addition, the level of improvement is critically affected by the proportion of traffic operated by CAVs (mixed traffic vs whole traffic operated with AVs).

NTUA represented LEVITATE in the session with a presentation by Maria Oikonomou titled “Impacts of autonomous transit services on urban networks: The case of Athens, Greece”, focusing on the microsimulation work conducted within WP5 of LEVITATE.

Key outputs of the presentation include the findings regarding point-to-point shuttle bus services, which led to increased delays and total distance travelled, while on the contrary the on-demand service showed decreased delays and constant driven kilometers. The introduction of the different shuttle bus services did not significantly affect conflicts as well as emissions, which were significantly lower when the number of CAVs was increased. In a small-scale urban network, automation did not affect traffic-related measurements, while in a large-scale urban network decreased delays, increased distance travelled and reduced conflicts were noticed.

  1. Session IV(A) – Transport planning and policy,
    Friday, September 3rd, 2021, (08:30 – 10:15).

Session IV(A) – Transport planning and policy addressed crucial issues examined and presented by expert researchers for the development and implementation of specific policies, tools and actions for achieving a successful transport planning in urban areas. As well established, sustainability plays an important role in all fields of transportation systems, thus it has to be seriously considered from the very beginning of a transport planning process. Therefore, actions and policies to be implemented should always be evaluated, leading researchers in the development and application of appropriate tools for achieving the best results in terms of sustainability.

NTUA represented LEVITATE in the session with a presentation by Apostolos Ziakopoulos titled “Forecasting impacts of Connected and Automated Transport Systems within the Levitate project.” This presentation placed more emphasis on the forecasting estimator of LEVITATE compared to the workshop presentation.

Several conclusions considered the future of the PST development, and the functionalities which will be available for the PST user as the LEVITATE project moves forward. Overall, it was highlighted that the LEVITATE PST aspires to become the go to, one stop shop tool for the calculation of societal impacts of automation by experts, authorities, stakeholders and any other interested party.

  1. Concluding remarks

As stated in the roundtable discussion of the CCAM workshop, and in the sessions co-influenced by LEVITATE inputs, CCAM initiatives should include holistic new paradigms that have to satisfy sustainable mobility while achieving transport safety, efficiency and environmental targets simultaneously. Stakeholder cooperation is essential to reach solutions satisfying the needs of road users, citizens, researchers, industry and authorities, and to achieve more clear and transparent outcomes.

Despite the projected elimination of human-related errors from automation, CCAM should not be treated as a de-facto substitute to conventional transport, but rather, a competitor that will have to strive hard for public acceptance. Public transport is proposed as a priority field for CCAM deployment due to both increased societal needs and levels of technological readiness.

  1. References relevant to the LEVITATE participation in ICTR 2021:
  • Ziakopoulos A., Roussou J., Boghani H., Hu B., Zach M., Veisten K., Hartveit K.J., Oikonomou M., Vlahogianni E., Thomas P., Yannis G. (2021). “Forecasting impacts of Connected and Automated Transport Systems within the Levitate project.” 10th International Congress on Transportation Research (ICTR) 2021, Rhodes, Greece, 2-3 September 2021.
  • Oikonomou M., Mourtakos V., Roussou J., Ziakopoulos A., Vlahogianni E., Yannis G. (2021). “Impacts of autonomous transit services on urban networks: The case of Athens, Greece”. 10th International Congress on Transportation Research (ICTR) 2021, Rhodes, Greece, 2-3 September 2021.

All NTUA presentations in ICTR 2021 are available online: https://www.nrso.ntua.gr/ictr2021-10th-international-congress-on-transportation-research-september-2021/

3rd European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving – EUCAD 2021

Events

EUCAD 2021 will be a high-level and evidence-based conference where policy challenges meet innovative solutions to deliver on societal benefits. The event is the only conference in Europe that brings together political leaders from the European Commission and Member States with high-level representatives of industry, knowledge institutes and road authorities to exchange knowledge and experience on the most recent technological developments and policies in the area of cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM).

The conference, taking place on 20-22 April 2021, consists of a series of plenary sessions complemented by several thematic breakout discussions as well as a virtual exhibition available throughout the event. The first two days of the programme are primarily policy-oriented while the third day is fully dedicated to break-out sessions discussing specific R&I challenges. All break-out sessions feature interactive panel discussions on specific R&I questions, combined with active audience participation. The virtual exhibition features R&I projects active in the field of automated mobility, including their presentation, documentation and contact information. The exhibition could also feature virtual demonstrations by some large-scale pilot projects.

Programma & registration
The programme for the conference is now published. Registration (free of charge) shall open shortly!

ARCADE: workshop on data sharing for automated driving

Events

ARCADE is a project whose mission is to network with all the vehicle automation projects. LEVITATE has already established a dialogue with ARCADE partners about impact assessment methodologies.

On February 25th, ARCADE organises an online workshop on the topic of data sharing in the CCAM area. ARCADE is a H2020 Coordination and Support Action. Data sharing is one of its topics. In the CAD knowledge base, ARCADE collected material for data sharing.

For cost-effective evaluation of CCAM and for comparability of automated driving research studies, data sharing is essential. If not, costly parallel work on data collection remains common practice. For training of AI, large data sets are needed as well. Many hurdles for data sharing exist, starting from data sensitivity, security, data formats and descriptions, to privacy (GDPR). Today’s working-from-home practice has quickly enabled some remote access facilities.

In this workshop, we will identify bottlenecks and promising approaches for data sharing. The morning session is a broader webinar presenting today’s status, experiences and challenges. The afternoon expert workshop features three break-out sessions where we work on defining boundary conditions and next steps following promising approaches. It is possible to register for morning or afternoon only.

The break-out sessions are:

  1. Principles for industry data sharing
    What principles can we agree upon for enabling data sharing in industrial and research projects? Under what conditions is sharing possible? After an introduction of an international multi-partner project, we will work on promising approaches.
  2. In-vehicle data selection and analysis
    Data is generated in vehicles for research and development. This could lead to difficulties in managing large amounts of data, governing and protecting IP rights, and privacy issues. What if the data could be processed in-vehicle and only a reduced dataset is sent back-office, after data is pseudonized and reduced in size? This workshop will discuss how can we reach this state and what are the steps needed.
  3. GDPR in practice
    What practical privacy challenges do researchers and developers face in order to collaborate and share personal data? We will discuss examples of the type of problems which may be encountered, examining how (and if) they may be overcome.

You can register here »