BOOK REVIEW: Co-operative ITS


Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems: Towards High-Level Automated Driving

This new edited book, edited by Dynniq’s Dr Meng Lu, presents recent results of the ongoing efforts for development and deployment of cooperative systems for road transport. These systems use communication between vehicles, as well as between vehicles and infrastructure, other road users and network, for exchange of information, enabling various applications for safety, efficiency and comfort. Cooperative vehicles, also referred to as connected vehicles, are a prelude to, and pave the way towards road transport automation. Vehicle connectivity and information exchange will be an important asset for future highly-automated driving.

The book provides a comprehensive insight in the state of the art of cooperative ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems), especially addresses the important role of ICT infrastructure (information and communication technologies), and presents the main achievements (both theory and practice) as well as the challenges in the domain, in Europe, the US and Asia/Pacific. The book consists of 26 chapters divided over seven parts, and this article presents a chapter-by-chapter outline of the book by its editor.

Part I – Introduction

Chapter 1 – Information and communications technology (ICT) is the use of computers and communication systems to collect, send, store, process and use data. ICT is the basis for intelligent transport systems (ITS), using sensor, communication, information processing and control technology. Communication between vehicles and infrastructure creates the area of cooperative ITS (C-ITS). General goal is to enhance comfort, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of transport and mobility. C-ITS as a prelude for automated road transport is the topic of this book, outlined in this chapter.

Part II – General aspects of connected, cooperative and automated road transport

Chapter 2 – For building an integrated C-ITS mobility system, in which all building blocks are combined to procure a sustainable, safe and secure mobility service to travellers, cooperation between stakeholders is equally important as technological maturity. Intense cooperation between automotive industry and road operators, based on mutual trust, and supported by a solid policy framework, is a key element to initiate and coordinate investments, and to guarantee a harmonised approach. Initiatives for such approach to C-ITS deployment, taking place around the world, are reviewed in this chapter.

Chapter 3 – After an overview of the history and development of the general architecture for ITS, the US and European initiatives for a framework for C-ITS architecture are introduced. Differences in approach, in terms of use and functionality, and efforts for international architecture harmonisation are reviewed. Harmonisation of the various data and communication standards is critical to assure that C-ITS can be supported by different entities, including public authorities, car manufacturers, and by various products, services and systems. This chapter is directly linked to Chapter 9 on standardisation.

Chapter 4 – A service-dominant business model identifies the added value of the service to the customer or user, the functions and capabilities required by each participant, and the expected costs and benefits. A set of blueprints for such business models is presented, with the aim to guide the large-scale implementation of sustainable C-ITS services for smart mobility in cities. Although specifically designed for eight European cities, in close collaboration with stakeholders in these cities, built-in flexibility permits these blueprints to be adopted in other cities that have similar challenges.

Chapter 5 – Discussion of human-factor related challenges related to the development of automated driving, such as: interaction between automated vehicles and humans (inside and outside the vehicle); misuse, skill degradation, level of trust and acceptance, motion sickness; interaction of automated vehicles with other road users; and design of safe and intuitive interaction concepts. Focus on the need for an adaptive HMI to achieve trust and acceptance of system of the automated functionalities of the system, the importance to consider different driver states, and the evaluation of automated systems.

Chapter 6 – To address the challenges of vehicle automation, and to promote a flexible market uptake, the current legal framework for road transport needs to evolve. A new coherent legal framework needs to be developed for vehicles that have not yet been built. The chapter begins with a discussion of the existing legal framework in the European Union, also in relation to national frameworks, and the changes that are needed from the perspective of future automated driving. Subsequent sections discuss similar topics for other parts of the world, covering the US, Japan, China, South Korea and Singapore.

Part III – V2X communication for cooperative and automated driving

Chapter 7 – Bidirectional communication, between vehicles, and with the road infrastructure, is a key component of C-ITS, and of great importance for future automated driving. The chapter reviews the two competing technologies for this type of communication, WLAN-based and cellular-based communication, which are very different in their fundamental philosophy. Consensus in favour of one of the two is therefore not expected, and likely both technologies will coexist and spread by their own, implying that communication devices have to support both, resulting in multi-stack equipment.

Key parameters are interoperability and compatibility.

Chapter 8 – Environment perception is an important aspect of automated driving. Although performance of on-board vehicle sensors is gradually increasing, automation levels 3 and above will require communication support. Cooperation amongst traffic participants will considerably extend capabilities of automated vehicles to solve complex traffic situations. The chapter provides an overview of European research in the area of connected and automated driving. Use cases, functions, and candidate connectivity technologies are discussed.

Chapter 9 – Harmonisation based on international standards is an important prerequisite for successful widespread deployment of C-ITS and future automated driving. This chapter introduces the development of standards for C-ITS, referred to as connected vehicles in the US, with focus on wireless (“over-the-air”) mobile communications (V2I, V2V and V2X), interfaces between central systems and other centres, road infrastructure, and vehicles or other mobile devices, which may entail some combination of wireline and wireless communications. Also C-ITS implementation is discussed.

Chapter 10 – C-ITS is recognised a disruptive factor that could increase traffic efficiency and improve traffic safety. C-ITS has been tested in various European cities, with a focus on signalized intersections. Related services provide advice to drivers with respect to optimal behaviour under specific situations. Lack of a standardized methodological framework for assessment of performance and transferability to other networks is an issue. The purpose of this chapter is to propose three methods that can facilitate and enable the scalability and transferability of C-ITS.

Chapter 11 – 5G-enabled communications and services can be utilized for improving the safety and efficiency of roads. The chapter recent advances in the development of novel road weather and safety services enabled by future 5G, the potential of low-latency 5G networks for future automated driving, and implementation and piloting of services and data communication concepts in real vehicular and test network environments. For non-critical or less bandwidth-consuming services, current 4G/LTE networks and ITS-G5 technology (if supported) could provide sufficient pre-5G performance.

Part IV – ICT infrastructure for automated driving and future traffic management

Chapter 12 – Cooperative systems means integration of infrastructure equipment and in-vehicle systems. Cooperation offers substantial benefits, but also drastically increases complexity. Besides behaviour of individual system entities, the behaviour of the (dynamic) system as a whole needs to be handled. Precise definition of interfaces is very important, and interdependency of behaviour is a critical point. Testing is important, but a topic also still under investigation. This chapter describes a concrete example of system integration for urban platooning, GLOSA and collective perception.

Chapter 13 – Three traffic-efficiency, and two traffic-safety-related approaches for infrastructure support of automated vehicles are described. Increase of GLOSA potential due to higher precision of instructions. Platoon shaping can take this even a step further. Data about intended-turn direction, desired speed and sensor perception information can significantly enhance control performance. A motorway merging assistant leads vehicles to safe gaps for entering the motorway. And infrastructure sensors can monitor areas that are likely affected by sensor occlusion.

Captor 14 – This chapter proposes a simple classification scheme for road infrastructure, and relevant requirements to support cooperative traffic. The scheme includes five levels, also known as ISAD levels. The objective is to harmonize and categorize the capabilities of a road segment to support and guide automated vehicles, also in mixed traffic and under dynamic circumstances, when automated vehicles may need to degrade or upgrade their automation level. Further enhancement of the ISAD levels is possible by including additional elements for continuous and dynamic classification.

Chapter 15 – If an automated vehicle cannot handle a situation, a Transition of Control (ToC) to the driver needs to take place. At higher automation levels, vehicles need to be able to perform a Minimum Risk Manoeuvre (MRM) to handle potential failure of ToC, in order to bring the vehicle to a safe state. Such manoeuvres will have increasing impact at higher higher penetration rates of automated vehicles, and are likely to especially occur in complex road situations. This chapter presents research on such Transition Areas, where transitions of control are likely to happen more often.

Chapter 16 – Vehicle automation is an essential element in the concept of smart cities, with ICT-based increased efficiency of traditional networks. Originally mainly positive effects were expected, but in recent years researchers started to raise doubts about the expected positive impacts, now often referred to as “wishful thinking”. Challenges are slow technological progress, high cost, limited scale of production, non-readiness of consumers, and lack of regulations. At best, there is much uncertainty about the impact of automated vehicles. This chapter presents a review of related research literature.

Part V – Automated driving: market, impacts, roadmap, data quality and driver aspects

Chapter 17 – This chapter focuses on the essential contribution that market penetration information can provide to any kind of impact assessment of automated driving. Market penetration studies in this domain originate from national Road Safety Programs, which typically target the action areas road users, infrastructure and vehicle technology. One proposed measure is to increase market penetration of vehicle safety systems. Retrospective analyses show that full penetration the fleet typically takes two to three decades, although financial incentives and regulation may speed up this process.

Chapter 18 – A key activity of the C-Roads Platform is evaluation and assessment, in national pilots, of impacts related to the deployment of C-ITS services. In the Italian C-Roads pilot, three technologies are deployed and tested: C-ITS services for awareness-raising perception of automated and semi-automated vehicles; truck platooning; and a level-3 system for autonomous driving under certain motorway conditions. Testing this set of widely different systems on public roads, is a challenging activity. The chapter describes the C-Roads Italian pilot, and the method, developed in the C-Roads Platform, that is used for evaluation and assessment of the systems.

Chapter 19 – The chapter presents an analysis of five use cases of highly-automated driving, in view of penetration, Operational Design Domains (ODD), costs to road operators, and impacts. Many of the results are very much linked to the Finnish situation, and thereby cannot be applied as such to other countries. ODD coverage and continuity are essential for uptake by the public. The study proposes a list of attributes for this relatively new concept. Due to the slow vehicle update cycle, major impacts on mobility, safety, efficiency and the environment would not materialise before 2040.

Chapter 20 – Exchange of data is an important aspect of automated driving. This needs specification and harmonisation of data exchange formats and communication channels. Equally important however is assessment and documentation of data quality. Good data quality contributes to trust, transparency and acceptance among data actors, and support data cooperation in complex technical environments, such as automated driving. Data quality is crucial for the successful roll-out of automated driving. The chapter discusses how work on establishing a common data quality framework can be initiated.

Chapter 21 – Driver intention recognition serves to anticipate possible driving manoeuvres. Existing approaches, focusing on vehicle-state information, have the limitation that a manoeuvre must be initialised before it can be recognised. More sophisticated approaches exploit the notion that the intent for the manoeuvre existed before the actual vehicle-trajectory change, and use driver-based input from camera systems. The chapter proposes an alternative model for driver-intention recognition that refrains from driver-based input and instead explores the use of information about the traffic situation.

Part VI – R&D and applications of connected, cooperative and automated driving outside Europe

Chapter 22 – Early research in the domain of cooperative and automated driving in Japan took place at universities and research institutes. As technology matured, car manufacturers and suppliers became involved, either collaborating with universities, or on their own. And as soon as technology and its impacts to society became more clear, the Japanese government undertook to lead the collaboration between industry, academia, and government. The chapter presents recent advances of two of the most influential and productive projects and initiatives in Japan, focusing on C-ITS cooperation aspects .

Chapter 23 – Stand-alone automated vehicles require high-cost sensors for reliable perception, substantial real-world data to improve decision-making, and accurate state measurements for resilient feedback control. Vehicle communication enables distributed sensing, learning and control. These permit, respectively, a broader sensing range at lower sensor cost; sharing of decision rules to achieve “swarm intelligence”; and coordination of movements, enhancing the ability to withstand external disturbances and measurement errors. This chapter describes these topics, and developments in China.

Chapter 24 – The United States have played a central role in de development and deployment of connected and automated vehicles (CAV). This chapter reviews the history and current status of CAV technology in the United States. Topics covered include the progress of the development and deployment of vehicle connectivity and automation, recent CAV research projects focusing on safety, mobility and environmental sustainability, and the cooperative automated driving platform CARMA for integration of technologies for automated driving and vehicular communication (V2V and V2X).

Chapter 25 – The concept of autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) uses autonomous vehicles for demand-responsive transportation of passengers and goods. Mobility-on-demand services can generate routes based on real-time demand. Use of autonomous vehicles helps to efficiently distribute vehicles in the network and reduce traffic congestion. This chapter presents solutions to deal with uncertainties in environment mapping, vehicle localisation, behaviour analysis, planning and fleet management. Validation of deployment on public roads in Singapore and the US is discussed.

Part VII – Discussion and conclusion

Chapter 26 – The book extensively presents the opportunities that cooperative and automated driving offers for making the transport system safer, more comfortable, more efficient, cleaner, more accessible and more homogenous. At the same time it becomes clear that a whole range of challenges need to be overcome. Integration of automated vehicles in real-life traffic under varying circumstance remains a major challenge. Implementation of high-level automated vehicles in urban areas with mixed traffic requires cooperative-infrastructure support. Our further joint efforts will pave the way.

FYI

This book covers recent research and innovation results of activates in cooperative and automated road transport. The book has contributions from around 90 authors from industry, academia, authorities and associations; and from the following countries: Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia, USA, Japan, China and Singapore. The book will be published by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in 2019: . For more information, please contact the editor, Dr. Meng Lu at

Dr Meng Lu is strategic innovation manager at Dynniq

Acknowledgements

I express my sincere thanks for the very kind and extensive support from the European Commission, ITS Japan, ITS Asia/Pacific, ERTICO – ITS Europe and ITS America. I sincerely thank all authors for their excellent contributions, and Kees Wevers for his strong support and help. And I thank the national and international initiatives and projects in the domain of cooperative and automated driving, and of these especially MAVEN (Managing Automated Vehicles Enhances Network) and TransAID (Transition Areas for Infrastructure-Assisted Driving), which are funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme, under Grant Agreements No. 690727 and No. 723390 respectively.

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