• L3Pilot, Europe’s first comprehensive pilot test of automated driving on public roads demonstrates automated systems for cars in Hamburg, Germany, in conjunction with ITS World Congress 2021
• SAE Level 3 and 4 automated driving systems have been tested on ordinary roads in seven European countries, including cross-border activities, thanks to pan-European testing environments and methodologies that have been developed with help from WMG, University of Warwick
• A “Code of Practice” has been created to speed up and harmonise the development of automated driving systems as well as a framework for collection, storage and evaluation of large amounts of data
• Increased safety identified as main benefit of SAE Level 3 automated driving systems

From 11 to 15 October the European research project L3Pilot, which WMG at the University of WarwickLink opens in a new window has worked on, led by Volkswagen AG and co-funded by the European Commission, showcases automated driving functions in the City of Hamburg and on motorways nearby. The four-year project will now come to its successful end with performing its Final Event in conjunction with the ITS World Congress in Hamburg 2021.

Running from 2017 to 2021, the project consortium brought together stakeholders from the whole value chain, including car manufacturers, suppliers, academia, research institutes, infrastructure and governmental agencies, user groups and the insurance sector.

The experience of the partners in large-scale testing intelligent vehicle technologies made it possible to create a pan-European testing environment. The Code of Practice for the Development of Automated Driving Functions (CoP-ADF) is one of the major achievements of L3Pilot. It provides comprehensive guidelines for supporting the design, development, verification and validation of automated driving technologies.

Fourteen partners focused on testing automated driving functions in normal motorway driving, traffic jams, urban driving and parking. The pilots, running from April 2019 until February 2021, involved seven countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxemburg, Sweden and the United Kingdom and included two cross-border activities between Germany and Luxemburg as well as Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

WMG, at the University of Warwick focussed on the development of a proof-of-concept prototype and a real-world demonstration of a cutting-edge technology for cooperative perception, using WMG’s state-of-the-art Open Innovation Vehicle Platform and mobile roadside units.

Aiming to enable safe automated driving at complex driving scenarios, such as roundabouts and T-junctions, the equipment was funded by the WMG Centre High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult.Link opens in a new window Specialising in innovation aimed at making transport cleaner, safer and more efficient, the CentreLink opens in a new window works with UK manufacturing partners to develop automated, connected, electric and shared mobility for a sustainable future.

However WMG also contributed to a variety of key project activities including: Cyber Security Analysis of highly automated driving functions in highway environments, known as highway chauffeur, and the development of a Consolidated Database (CDB) to store large datasets acquired in the project during the experimental phase, which also included designing and implementing a web-based User Interface (UI) to provide access to CDB for L3pilot users, for example, partners and data analysts.

Prof. Mehrdad Dianati, from WMG at the University of Warwick comments:
“A major challenge for the safety of automated vehicles is how they will navigate through complex road segments, a part of our role in L3Pilot was to demonstrate how this challenge can be addressed using state-of-the-art cooperative automated driving technology we have developed at WMG.

L3Pilot Coordinator Aria Etemad, Volkswagen AG comments:
“Automated driving has a huge potential to make mobility safer, more efficient and more comfortable. The L3Pilot partners made great efforts to pursue piloting and met the project goals – despite the tremendous pandemic crisis. This shows the outstanding commitment of our Europe-wide partner network. One of our major achievements is a Code of Practice for the Development of Automated Driving Functions. It provides guidelines that will support the development of safe and reliable automated driving systems.”

The project equipped 70 vehicles and the test fleet comprised 13 different vehicle brands, from a passenger car to a SUV. More than 400,000 kilometres were driven on motorways including 200,000 km in an automated mode and 200,000 km in a manual mode as a baseline for comparison of the user experience and evaluation of the impacts. More than 24,000 km were travelled in the automated mode in urban traffic. With the aim to put the focus on the user experience of automated driving functions, over 1,000 persons participated in piloting and complementary virtual environment tests.

The project focused on SAE Level 3 automated driving functions on motorways and in urban traffic, while SAE Level 4 functions targeted exclusively parking and close-distance scenarios. The SAE Level 3 features Conditional Automation which requires the driver to respond appropriately to a request to take-over the vehicle control for manual driving. In case the driver is not responding properly to a take-over request, the vehicle performs an automatic minimum risk manoeuvre to safely stop the vehicle.

Moreover, L3Pilot carried out extensive supplementary tests to also research user experiences that were difficult to address in large-scale piloting due to safety requirements and legal issues. Therefore, supplementary studies were performed in addition to the on-road piloting to be able to study system usage and other relevant user experiences with ordinary, non-professional drivers in safe and virtual environments. The extensive studies comprised some 600 subjects.

Research evaluation results have shown that increased safety is the main benefit of SAE Level 3 automated driving systems. They also show that an automated driving system consisting of motorway, urban and parking functions for robust hands-off driving will generate a social benefit that is higher than the social costs of installing it.

L3Pilot paved the way for scaled-up driving tests with automated series vehicles in real-life traffic. This underscores the leadership of Europe's automotive industry in developing reliable, thoroughly tested and user-friendly technology.

ENDS

12 OCTOBER 2021

NOTES TO EDITORS

High-res images available at:

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/september_2021/microsoftteams-image_5.png
Caption: WMG, at the University of Warwick demonstrating their technical achievement at ITS World Congress.
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/september_2021/microsoftteams-image_7.png
Caption: WMG, at the University of Warwick demonstrating their technical achievement at ITS World Congress.
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/september_2021/microsoftteams-image_8.png
Caption: WMG, at the University of Warwick demonstrating their technical achievement at ITS World Congress.
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/september_2021/microsoftteams-image_9.png
Caption: WMG, at the University of Warwick demonstrating their technical achievement at ITS World Congress.
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/september_2021/microsoftteams-image_10.png
Caption: WMG, at the University of Warwick demonstrating their technical achievement at ITS World Congress.
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

Video available to view at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJnzMGcr9Fc
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

L3Pilot is an Innovation Action, co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 programme with the contract number 723051. Thirty four organisations have committed to scientifically test and assess the impact of automated driving systems on driver comfort, safety and traffic efficiency as part of the project.

www.l3pilot.eu
Twitter _L3Pilot_
LinkedIn: L3Pilot

Duration: 50 months, 1 September 2017 – 31 October 2021
Total cost: €68 million
EC contribution: €36 million
Coordinator: Volkswagen AG

Partners:

Automotive manufacturers: Volkswagen AG, AUDI AG, BMW Group, Stellantis | Centro Ricerche Fiat SCPA, Ford, Honda R&D Europe, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz AG, Adam Opel AG, Stellantis, Renault, Toyota Motor Europe, Volvo Car Corporation

Suppliers: Aptiv, FEV GmbH, Veoneer Sweden

Research: German Aerospace Center DLR; ika RWTH Aachen University; VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland; Chalmers tekniska hoegskola; SNF – Centre for Applied Research at NHH; University of Leeds; Institute of Communication and Computer Systems ICCS; Würzburg Institute for Traffic Sciences WIVW; University of Genoa; TNO – Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research; WMG, University of Warwick; European Center for Information and Communication Technologies – EICT GmbH

Authorities: Federal Highway Research Institute BASt; The Netherlands Vehicle Authority RDW

User Groups: Federation Internationale de l’Automobile FIA

Insurers: AZT Automotive GmbH, Swiss Reinsurance Company

SMEs: ADAS Management Consulting,

For further information please contact:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk