On Monday the 7th of October the first day of a 3-day plenary meeting for the H2020 AVENUE project was held at the University of Geneva, Battelle. All the 16th partners were present and we were a group of approximately 35 people working towards the same objectives “To empower Autonomous Vehicles to Evolve to a New Urban Experience”.
Day 1 - M18 AVENUE H2020 plenary meeting
07/10/2019
H2020 - AVENUE projet - Application mobile pour véhicules autonome
H2020 - AVENUE projet - Application mobile pour véhicules autonome
Day 1 summary
Presentation status of project (Unige.)
Dimitri Konstantas from Unige opened the meeting by revealing the 3-day meeting plan and organisation.
We had the privilege to listen to Mme. Anne Hornung-Soukup, President of the TPG. who exposed to us their vision of the future of mobility and how TPG will include the AVENUE project within the mobility of tomorrow.
We had the privilege to listen to Mme. Anne Hornung-Soukup, President of the TPG. who exposed to us their vision of the future of mobility and how TPG will include the AVENUE project within the mobility of tomorrow.
WP 7 : Demonstrators (TPG : Geneva, Keolis Lyon : Lyon, Sales-Lentz : Luxembourg, holo : Copenhagen)
The TPG presented the first statistical results of the Meyrin shuttle. There, everyone can already test our Autonomous Vehicle every morning and every evening of the week. This site allows the entire project to be improved as they faced and solved a series of technical issues such as roadwork and wrongly parked cars.
Very soon they will open a new line on a new site (we currently can’t expose its location) in which we will be able to test the first ever publicly available autonomous on-demand service.
In Luxembourg, Sales-Lentz presented the statistical information about their shuttle running in Pfaffenthal. They carried of 18’000 passengers up to today. Our partners from luxembourg faced a series of issues due to bad/cold weather. All the technical team worked on it and found solutions that are now shared accross all the PTO’s of the project.
Very soon they will open a new line on a new site (we currently can’t expose its location) in which we will be able to test the first ever publicly available autonomous on-demand service.
In Luxembourg, Sales-Lentz presented the statistical information about their shuttle running in Pfaffenthal. They carried of 18’000 passengers up to today. Our partners from luxembourg faced a series of issues due to bad/cold weather. All the technical team worked on it and found solutions that are now shared accross all the PTO’s of the project.
H2020 - AVENUE projet - Application mobile pour véhicules autonome
H2020 - AVENUE projet - Application mobile pour véhicules autonome
Keolis Lyon have a very ambitious plan for Autonomous Vehicles. They are designing and currently testing it for the Groupama Stadium. The goal is to offer a new mobility service to link the standard public transport pathways with the stadium itself. They are tackling issues like round-abouts but also traffic lights. To solve this they are connecting the AV system with the TSRC communication protocol. In short, this means that the autonomous shuttle is now able to communicate with public traffic lights and therefore integrate perfectly in normal traffic.
holo, former Autonomous Mobility, our partners from Denmark are currently struggling with Danish road regulation for the Nordhavn, Copenhagen site. However holo is working in parallel and have already 3 different pilot sites in Gothenburg Sweden, Oslo Norway and Helsinki Finland.
As for the future work and improvements, PTO’s and Navya will focus on shuttle safety, speed and robustness to road changes and weather conditions.
holo, former Autonomous Mobility, our partners from Denmark are currently struggling with Danish road regulation for the Nordhavn, Copenhagen site. However holo is working in parallel and have already 3 different pilot sites in Gothenburg Sweden, Oslo Norway and Helsinki Finland.
As for the future work and improvements, PTO’s and Navya will focus on shuttle safety, speed and robustness to road changes and weather conditions.
WP5 Command, Control Communication (Bestmile.)
Bestmile presented to the consortium the Command and Control Platform. In short they did a lot of work integrating with all the different services allowing us (MobileThinking) to get data from their APIs in order to show and book autonomous vehicles directly from our mobile application.
On top of that they have mapped the future TPG site and it is now almost ready for the on-demand service. Soon we (MobileThinking) will be able to request a vehicle for pick-up in a real on-demand way. The goal is to use the simulator Bestmile has implemented to develop the application side and run our tests. And then, once it’s ready, we will deploy real tests directly on-site with the real Navya Autonomous Vehicle… this is a very exciting challenge as it will be one of the first on-demand sites ever done in the world.
On top of that they have mapped the future TPG site and it is now almost ready for the on-demand service. Soon we (MobileThinking) will be able to request a vehicle for pick-up in a real on-demand way. The goal is to use the simulator Bestmile has implemented to develop the application side and run our tests. And then, once it’s ready, we will deploy real tests directly on-site with the real Navya Autonomous Vehicle… this is a very exciting challenge as it will be one of the first on-demand sites ever done in the world.
Meyrin site visit
After the meeting, the consortium travelled to the Meyrin site where they tested the Autonomous Vehicle in real conditions (driving on the open road at rush hour).
It was instructive for all the partners and especially for other Public Transport Operators.
It was instructive for all the partners and especially for other Public Transport Operators.
H2020 - AVENUE projet - Application mobile pour véhicules autonome
H2020 - AVENUE projet - Application mobile pour véhicules autonome
Social dinner
Finally, the day ended with a social lunch. A great opportunity for partners to exchange on the AVENUE project in a more relaxed way as well as increasing bonds between each other.
Conclusion
After 18 months within the project we are very happy with the advancement of the project. Three sites out of 4 have passed all the regulatory issues and have vehicles running. In terms of autonomous driving they all encountered and solved different issues such as roundabouts, traffic lights and pedestrians. During these first months they all shared and learned from each other and therefore help each other moving faster towards our end goal.
At MobileThinking, we are very excited to see these improvements as we will soon be able to test our applications in real-life. This will be a very challenging step as we will most probably encounter new situations that couldn’t be anticipated with the simulator provided by Bestmile.
At MobileThinking, we are very excited to see these improvements as we will soon be able to test our applications in real-life. This will be a very challenging step as we will most probably encounter new situations that couldn’t be anticipated with the simulator provided by Bestmile.
