Platooning, autonomous valet parking … The Vedecom Institute takes stock of the European Autopilot project

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The European Autopilot project was launched in 2017 to study the contribution of the Internet of Things (IoT) to autonomous vehicles. In total, 45 partners and 6 sites worked on different use cases during these three years. We all make the autonomous vehicle a smart health smart health connected object like any other, which communicates with the infrastructure via a cloud platform. This Thursday, February 6, 2020, the time is in balance.

The city of Versailles has become a testing ground for the Vedecom institute as part of Autopilot. A dozen tourist points of interest in the Saint Louis district were equipped with cameras and smart health connected to the cloud infrastructure, as well as 5 traffic lights. The objective was to study the additional information that could be provided by the infrastructure to autonomous vehicles. Two use cases were tested.

Platooning to rebalance the carsharing stations

The first is a platooning system for carsharing. Anglicism "platooning" means that several vehicles are smart health connected to each other: a lead vehicle, driven by someone, is followed by autonomous cars. "The objective is to ultimately see if it is possible to rebalance car stations with one person sharing", explains to L'Usine Digitale Thomas Bonhoure, planning and economic development director in charge of transport for the agglomeration of Versailles Grand Parc.

A use that could be all the more interesting as one of the current friction points for the economic viability of car-sharing services is precisely the fact of having one person per vehicle to rebalance the stations and / or take care of their refill. "The technological feasibility of this platooning system has been demonstrated, but there are still many economic and legal obstacles", adds Thomas Bonhoure.

smart health connected lights to optimize platooning

The tests were carried out with 5 vehicles communicating with each other and linked to a cloud platform. This allows them to retrieve information from the traffic lights: the lead vehicle sees the time remaining before the light turns red and the optimal speed so that all of the following vehicles can also cross the intersection.

Reinforced safety for pedestrians and cyclists

The second use case concerns the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Here, the experiment consisted in detecting these road users using cameras or smartwatches, smartphones and other boxes smart health connected to the bike. Their probable position and trajectory are transmitted to autonomous vehicles via the cloud platform. The autonomous vehicle can thus anticipate the presence of a cyclist or a pedestrian and slow down before even seeing the person.

These pilots allow "better understand what the position of a city can be in all these developments, assures Thomas Bonhoure. The role of infrastructure will be more important than what we think to deploy autonomous vehicles ". In order to keep abreast of these technological developments, Versailles seeks to position itself as "a giant playground" for tests related to the autonomous vehicle. Its smart health connected infrastructures could attract other players.

Many uses to improve security

The Autopilot project enabled other actors to carry out communication tests between traffic lights and autonomous vehicles, the aim being that the vehicle adapts its speed before arriving at the traffic light. The most recent models ofAudi, already offer their drivers to view the seconds remaining before the traffic lights turn red or green in different American cities.

Some have also carried out cyclist or pedestrian detection tests using cameras or smart health connected objects to ensure better security. Tests on the transmission of information collected by the vehicles themselves, such as obstacles encountered on the road or slowdowns, to other vehicles via a cloud platform were also carried out.

Autonomous parking system

In another register, one of the teams tested an autonomous parking valet project. The driver reserves his place on an application which transmits to the parking management system that it is occupied. When he arrives there, he only needs to park his vehicle in a temporary place. The parking card and the place where the vehicle is to be parked is then transmitted to the system on board the vehicle. And the latter can go autonomously to the indicated place and return to the starting point when the driver requests it. Such a system could, for example, be used in parking lots at stations or airports.

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