CORDS-VTS
Developing safe vehicle automation
With increasing penetration rates of driver assistance systems in road vehicles, powerful sensing and processing solutions enable further automation of on-road as well as off-road vehicles. In this maturing environment, SMEs are stepping in and education needs to align with this trend. One of the challenges is how to ensure the safe behaviour of automated vehicle technology in interaction with humans and other vulnerable road users (VRUs).
Testing scenarios with humans in real life
HAN students and researchers developed a prototype robot platform – the HANpod - to test automated vehicle technology in dynamic road scenarios that include VRUs. This robot platform can make complex manoeuvres while carrying dummies of typical VRUs, such as pedestrians and bicyclists. One or more of these robots can be used to test the ability of automated vehicles to detect VRUs in realistic traffic scenarios and exhibit safe behaviour while interacting with VRUs, on public roads as well as in restricted areas.
Crossing pedestrian test using a robot dummy in the SafeCLAI project.
Commercially available VRU-robot platforms are conforming to standards, making them inflexible with respect to VRU-dummy design, and prices that are far out of reach for SMEs, education and research.
Open robot/dummy-based test system
The CORDS-VTS consortium aims to create an open version of an integrated solution to physically emulate traffic scenarios including VRUs. While analysing desired applications and scenarios, the consortium partners will define prioritized requirements (e.g. robot platform performance, dummy types and behaviour, desired software functionality, etc.). Multiple robots and dummies will be designed, developed, practically integrated and demonstrated in a multi-VRU scenario. The aim is to create a flexible, upgradeable solution, published in open source: The hardware (robot platform and dummies) will be published in the form of well-documented DIY (do-it-yourself) projects. The accompanying software will be published as an open-source project on GitLab. The foreseen system architecture is as follows:
With the CORDS-VTS solution, SME companies, researchers and educators can test vehicle automation technology at a reachable price point and with the necessary flexibility, enabling higher innovation rates.
The CORDS-VTS consortium consists of the following members:
