Robotic competitions to design future transport systems: the case of JRC AUTOTRAC 2020

Vehicle automation and connectivity bring new opportunities for safe and sustainable mobility in urban and highway networks. Such opportunities are however not directly associated with traffic flow improvements. Research on exploitation of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) toward a more efficient traffic currently remains at a theoretical level, and/or based on simulation models with limited reliability. Furthermore, testing CAVs in the real world is still costly and very challenging from an implementation perspective. A possible alternative is to use automated robots. By designing and testing both the low- and the high-level controllers of CAVs, it is indeed possible to reach a better understanding of the challenges that future vehicles will need to face. Robotic applications can effectively test these challenges within a wide variety of research communities—for example, via robotic competitions. Along this direction, the Joint Research Centre has organized the first European robotic traffic competition for automated miniature vehicles. Results show the suitability of the methodology with different teams proposing completely different approaches to deal with the challenge and thus achieving different results. Future competitions may further raise awareness about the possibility of using CAVs to improve traffic and to engage with a broader community to design systems that are really capable of achieving this goal.

CIUFFO Biagio;  MAKRIDIS Michail;  PADOVAN Valter;  BENENATI Emilio;  BORIBOONSOMSIN Kanok;  CHEMBAKASSERIL Mamen Thomas;  DARAS Petros;  DAS Viswanath;  DIMOU Anastasios;  GRAMMATICO Sergio;  HARTANTO Ronny;  HOELSCHER Malte;  JIANG Yu;  KRILASEVIC Suad;  LIU Shangrui;  NGUYEN LE Quang Nhat;  ROSIER Cas;  RUAN Pingbo;  WEI Zhensong;  WU Guoyuan;  ZHAO Xuanpeng;  ZHAO Zhouqiao; 

2023-03-30

SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC

JRC127244

0361-1981 (online),   

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/03611981221110566,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC127244,   

10.1177/03611981221110566 (online),