Automated Road Transport (ART) is seen as one of the key technologies and major technological advancements influencing and shaping our future mobility and quality of life. The ART technology encompasses passenger cars, public transport vehicles, and urban and interurban freight transport and also extends to the road, IT and telecommunication infrastructure needed to guarantee safe and efficient operations of the vehicles. In this framework, CARTRE is accelerating development and deployment of automated road transport by increasing market and policy certainties. CARTRE supports the development of clearer and more consistent policies of EU Member States in collaboration with industry players ensuring that ART systems and services are compatible on a EU level and are deployed in a coherent way across Europe. CARTRE includes a joint stakeholder’s forum in order to coordinate and harmonise ART approaches at European and international level. CARTRE creates a solid knowledge base of all European activities, supports current activities and structures research outcomes by enablers and thematic areas. CARTRE involves more than 60 organisations to consolidate the current industry and policy fragmentation surrounding the development of ART.

The overall objective of the L3Pilot project is to test the viability of automated driving (AD) as a safe and efficient means of transportation, exploring and promoting new service concepts to provide inclusive mobility. This high-level objective is detailed as four major technical objectives: (i) create a standardised Europe-wide piloting environment for automated driving (ii) coordinate activities across the piloting community to acquire the required data (iii) pilot, test, and evaluate automated driving functions and connected automation (iv) innovate and promote AD for wider awareness and market introduction. The European automotive sector must remain competitive in vehicle automation in the face of increasing competition from the US and Asia. Only by joining forces in pilot testing and evaluation of AD systems with real users will European industry meet the challenge coming from overseas. The project will focus on large-scale piloting of SAE Level 3 functions, with additional assessment of some Level 4 functions. The functionality of the systems used is exposed to variable conditions in 11 European countries, 100 vehicles and 1000 test drivers. The approach will be to adapt the FESTA methodology for testing automated driving needs. The tested functions cover a wide range from parking to overtaking, and urban intersection driving. Due to its large coverage of driving situations, L3Pilot is unique, and the first project which will demonstrate and test such a comprehensive menu of automated driving functions. The data collected will also be made available for third parties outside the consortium, for further use. The evaluation of the data will focus on technical, user acceptance, driving and travel behaviour, impact on traffic and society. The project promotion will include user outreach campaigns with four showcases, and the creation of a comprehensive guideline - a Code of Practice - with best practices for the development of automated driving functions.

The HEADSTART (Harmonised European Solutions for Testing Automated Road Transport) project will define testing and validation procedures of Connected and Automated Driving (CAD) functions including its key enabling technologies (i.e. communications, cyber-security, positioning) by cross-linking of all test instances such as simulation, proving ground and real world field tests to validate safety and security performance according to the needs of key user groups (technology developers, consumer testing groups and type approval authorities). Five (5) objectives encompass the HEADSTART project: 1) Create a dynamic catalogue of existing methodologies, procedures, tools for testing, validation and certification considering multi-stakeholder requirements 2) Harmonisation of existing testing and validation approaches taking into account other industries and domains 3) Define and develop test, validation and certification methodologies and procedures for CAD functions building upon existing initiatives. 4) Demonstrate the developed methodologies, procedures and tools through the testing of 4 CAD use cases. 5) Reach consensus by creating and managing an expert network of CAD testing to promote adoption of the project results considering multi-stakeholder needs HEADSTART brings together a large representation of stakeholders across the value chain leveraging the knowledge from European and national activities on CAD testing. The consortium and associated stakeholders will cluster the most relevant initiatives, develop the specific procedures and tools missing and harmonise the whole approach to reach a harmonised European solution for testing, validating and certifying automated road vehicles. This will be achieved through international cooperation with industry, academia and policy makers participating in dedicated working groups of a managed expert network during the whole project duration.

The mission of ARCADE is to coordinate consensus-building across stakeholders for sound and harmonised deployment of Connected, Cooperative and Automated Driving (CAD) in Europe and beyond. ARCADE supports the commitment of the European Commission, the European Member States and the industry to develop a common approach to development, testing, validation and deployment of CAD in Europe and beyond. ARCADE involves 23 partners, 43 associated partners and over 500 subscribers, jointly forming the CAD network of European experts and stakeholders from the public, industry and research sectors, with international outreach. ARCADE uses a dual approach to identify and overcome bottlenecks and in parallel maximise consensus and synergy between stakeholders. Using a road metaphor, ARCADE focusses on “removing road blocks, paving the road, prevent traffic jams and providing navigation to a common destination”. In an annual cycle, ARCADE positions the CAD Network (WP2) centrally which brings together the CAD community at national, European and International levels. The Thematic Areas (WP3) work on content creation leading to consensus-based positions, needs and scenarios. The Knowledge Base (WP4) consolidates the CAD knowhow baseline and serves as public one-stop shop overview of CAD. The main results of ARCADE will be: · Knowledge Base on CAD regulations and policy, on organisations & projects, on standards, on testing methodologies & data and lessons learned · Scenarios, positions, gap analysis and recommendations on 12 thematic CAD areas · Updates of CAD roadmaps · Common Research & Innovation approaches across EU, US, Japan and other countries involved · Web and news flash promotion of national, European and international CAD activities

The vision of i4Driving is to lay the foundation for a new industry-standard methodology to establish a credible and realistic human road safety baseline for virtual assessment of CCAM systems. The two central ideas we propose are (1) a multi-level, modular and extendable simulation library that combines existing and new models for human driving behavior; in combination with (2) an innovative cross-disciplinary methodology to account for the huge uncertainty in both human behaviors and use case circumstances. This rigorous treatment of the uncertainty is crucial to assess how much of our confidence in model inputs, parameters, and structure is justified. It also makes explicit how experts from different disciplines judge the outcomes and how justified the underlying assumptions really are. Our consortium combines all the expertise needed to develop this methodology (e.g., traffic engineering, human factors, data & computer science). We have the experimental means to gather the evidence beyond the state-of-art needed to realistically simulate (near) accidents in multi-driver scenarios (access to many data sources, advanced driving simulators, and field labs). We have a strong international network to collaborate with and harmonize our approach with academic and professional partners in e.g., the US (NADS facility); Australia (UQ advanced driving simulator and TRACSLab connected driving simulator facilities), China (Tongji Univ. 8-dof driving simulator and large-scale field lab) and Japan (NTSEL). Finally, we have all the relevant partners on-board to test and apply the methodology (Universities and research labs, OEMs and Tier 1, vehicle regulators, type-approval authorities, standardization institutes, insurance companies). i4Driving offers a proposition for the short and the longer term: a set of building blocks that pave the way for a driving license for AVs.