On Thursday, May 14, Kevin and Mattia attended (from the comfort of their home) the fifth two-day plenary meeting of the AVENUE H2020 project. We were supposed to meet in Copenhagen, but given the COVID19 situation, we did so by videoconference. All 16 partners were present and we were a group of about 40 people working towards the same goal "Giving autonomous vehicles the means to evolve into a new urban experience".
5th AVENUE H2020 plenary meeting
14-15/10/2019
Agenda
Two days of meetings were needed to go around the 10 AVENUE work packages. Each WP leader presented their progress since the beginning of the year as well as the developments planned for the coming months.
There was a lot of discussion about COVID19 and the adaptations needed to move forward with this exciting project. Indeed, public transports are extremely impacted by the health situation. As it stands, we have had to stop all real-life testing. Fortunately we are bouncing back by working on new functionalities and using the simulators developed so far.
We cannot reveal the content of these meetings, but we can assure you that the work is progressing at a fast pace and that as soon as legislation allows it, we will deploy the first tests in real situations.
There was a lot of discussion about COVID19 and the adaptations needed to move forward with this exciting project. Indeed, public transports are extremely impacted by the health situation. As it stands, we have had to stop all real-life testing. Fortunately we are bouncing back by working on new functionalities and using the simulators developed so far.
We cannot reveal the content of these meetings, but we can assure you that the work is progressing at a fast pace and that as soon as legislation allows it, we will deploy the first tests in real situations.
Conclusion
These two days of virtual meetings went extremely well. Indeed, videoconferencing had great advantages in this particular case. We were easily able to do several parallel sessions. More people were able to participate due to the ease of access. We were all able to work from the comfort of our home. it was much much cheaper. On the other hand, there was a lack of human interaction. Therefore, we are already looking forward to the next plenary meeting which will take place at the end of October 2020. Hopefully we can take the opportunity to visit Copenhagen this time!
