Looking back, 2022 has generally been an ambivalent year with respect to automated driving. On the positive side, one can notice the delivery of a major milestone in automotive history by Mercedes with the introduction of their DRIVE PILOT as a first system with level 3 automation. On the other side there was the downturn of ArgoAI with accompanying choral voices that this is the beginning of a trend rather than being a singular event.

Both were no surprises for us. Already quite a few years back we have identified major conceptional burdens for autonomous driving within the project WienZWA, which are beyond the intensively discussed technical issues of sensors, algorithms, use of AI, etc. Within the project Connecting Austria we have elaborated and investigated those in detail. One of our consequences is the strong believe that automated driving would significantly benefit from connectivity between vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructure, also taking infrastructure support for automated driving (ISAD) and ODD awareness for cooperative driving into consideration. This is especially true, if one wants to reduce the number of accidents and congestions to improve efficiency for energy savings and emission reduction.

Of course we carefully listened to the arguments and requirements of some OEMs and stakeholders, who prefer not to trust data from others but rely only on their own sensors and data sources. Within the project DIGEST we believe, that we delivered a major contribution to sharing information reliably in the future. Within the project COPE we took the first step in the direction of truly collaborative, distributed algorithms for collision avoidance.

Both projects ended in December 2022. The continuation and follow ups of DIGEST and COPE in 2023ff are already in the pipelines. Contact us, if you want to contribute (as organisation or person). In the meantime, we invite and encourage you to provide feedback on the public available DIGEST project result hot off the press.

#projectDIGEST #projectcope #digitaltwin #ccamdecisionsupportplattform #connecteddriving #ccam #collisionavidance #isad

Thanks to all the partners and supporters @ASFINAG, @BAST, @astra, @bmk, @ffg, @logistikum, @jr, @dlr, @walter, @sandra, @swarco, #attc, …

We keep on pushing even harder in 2023! Stay tuned, more to come soon!