The high-level objective of TAURO is to identify, analyse and finally propose suitable founding technologies for the future European automated and autonomous rail transport, to be further developed, certified and deployed through the activities planned for the European Partnership for Transforming Europe’s Rail System. To achieve this, TAURO is divided into four technical WPs, following the scope of the call, that each deal with separate system elements, with each contributing to the overall goal of the project. These four areas of work are; • Environment perception for automation • Remote driving and command • Automatic status monitoring and diagnostic for autonomous trains • Technologies supporting migration to ATO over ETCS These technical WPs will be supported by a comprehensive dissemination and exploitation WP that will guarantee the results from TAURO are communicated to the necessary stakeholders, standards and regulatory bodies to ensure that the future policy and technical decisions are taken on the basis of the science and research performed in TAURO, and more important, who guarantee the coherence with other Shift2Rail ongoing activities and assure a seamless bridging between TAURO and the next initiative within Horizon Europe, Transforming Europe’s Rail System.

The railway sector is currently acting in a fragmented way and in silos, corresponding most often to physical or functional subsystems or use cases, and the different owners/managers of the overall infrastructure at regional/national level, without global extensive view or full control of the global system involved by rail operations. With the progress of digitization, analogue devices based on relays were progressively substituted by digital ones, and it is more and more evident that enabling the communication between already existing digital tools for various subsystems can be beneficial. What is missing is an efficient, automated and standardized way for these integrated and interplaying systems to act as one ecosystem: sharing, integrating, identifying, correlating and exploiting the right data at the right time. In order to meet these challenges, the objective of LinX4Rail is to develop and promote within Shift2Rail framework and beyond, a sectorial common Functional Railway System Architecture. It will be supported by a widely adopted Shift2Rail Conceptual Data Model (CDM) that will, with the commitment of the Shift2Rail members, through Shift2Rail Programme Board Change Management Process, establish the standard for interactions between legacy and new systems and thus ensure sustainable interoperability between systems. The ambition of LinX4Rail is to achieve a comprehensive approach for the CDM, global system modelling specification and a strategy for implementation of technological breakthroughs, including RCA, with the inputs from a communication system perspective and give a vision of future evolution of Functional Railway System Architecture.

European Railway operators are under pressure to decrease their life cycle cost, to increase significantly their reliability and punctuality, to be more adaptive to different services. The European railway system remaining very fragmented in terms of technologies, the adoption of new technologies and the renewal of former technologies are not quicker enough for the railway mode to answer rightly to the public policy needs. Research and innovation has a part to play in achieving these goals by giving to the datas and their models and further the definition of a global railway system architecture as it is developing in other transport modes and industries the relevant roles that will support the necessary evolutions. The undergoing LinX4Rail project sets the grounds for a shared vision of the railway system architecture, as well as the development of the Conceptual Data Model (CDM) which will enable different simulation or operational subsystems to run together, which paves the way to building a shared and interoperable architecture. The objectives of LINX4RAIL-2 are: • To manage the follow-up of the existing work on System Architecture and Conceptual Data Model (CDM) carried out in the on-going LinX4Rail project, aiming at a large adoption for the European railways sector, • To ensure wider uptake of results from LinX4Rail by proving the performance of the proposal methodology and vision and by evaluating the impacts, taking into account the business case, • To establish a single ‘repository’ for System Architecture and CDM with a well-developed sustainability plan, • To adopt a common vision for the functional railway vision able to transform the Europe railway system.

X2RAIL-3 represents the 3rd proposal of the Shift2Rail members in the IP2 “Advanced Traffic Management & Control Systems” domain and it aims to continue the research and development of key technologies within the following Technology Demonstrators (TDs): Adaptable Communications for all Railways (TD2.1 / WP3) – The objective is to demonstrate, via the integration of the different prototypes into dedicated demonstrators, that a new Communication System will be able to overcome the shortcomings in current ETCS and CBTC communications and deliver an adaptable communications system usable for train control applications in all market segments. Moving Block (TD 2.3 / WP4) – the scope is to move beyond the laboratory preparations undertaken in the framework of the X2Rail-1 project and to develop technical demonstrators for suitable railways applications. Zero On-Site Testing (TD 2.6 / WP5) – In the context of the simulation and testing framework integrating new functionalities such as moving block/satellite positioning, finalising the general architecture and will as well perform specific prototypes. Virtually Coupled Train Sets (TD 2.8 / WP6 & WP7) – The action aims to perform a comprehensive study focusing on the new concept of “Virtual coupling”, which foresees that trains will be able to run much closer to one another and to dynamically modify their own composition on the move. Cyber Security (TD 2.11 / WP8 & WP9) – In the context of Cyber Security, the main objectives are to define a “Cyber-Security” System to railway and to contribute to a secure development standard applicable to railway applications. ATO over ETCS pilot test for freight demonstrator (TD 5.6 / WP10) – In the context of freight autonomous train operation, the main objective is to perform field testing with specific focus on freight operational scenarios to get early feedback from the field on potential improvement necessities.

The Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) will be the 5G worldwide standard for railway operational communications, conforming to European regulation as well as responding to the needs and obligations of rail organisations outside of Europe. The work on functional & technical requirements, specification & standardisation in 3GPP as well as regarding harmonised spectrum solutions is currently led by UIC, in cooperation with the whole railway sector. A major challenge is the update by European Railway Agency of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability of Control Command and Signalling (CCS TSI) by the end of 2022 with a full description of FRMCS with respect to interoperability functions. Therefore, the 5GRAIL project aims to verify the first set of FRMCS specifications and standards (FRMCS V1) by developing and testing prototypes of the FRMCS ecosystem. The validation of the latest available railway-relevant 5G specifications will be achieved through cross-border emulation trials covering significant portions of railway operational communication requirements and including the core technological innovations for rail expected from 5G release 16 and pre-release 17. The project will first define functional tests and then work towards the development and evaluation of prototypes, for both on-board and infrastructure, including vital (ETCS, ATO) and essential (voice specific services, TCMS and video) applications. Prototypes will be then tested in simulated and real environments, with pilots in labs and in the field rolled out in various European sites (France, Hungary and Germany), to ensure compliancy and validation for FRMCS specifications, standards and performance, and consequently guarantee the time to market for FRMCS deployments, planned for 2025 as per European timeline. 5GRAIL will finally deliver test report conclusions to potentially update FRMCS V1 specifications and to identify technical constraints related to implementation issues.