A new EU-funded project that aims to provide solutions for managing automated vehicles in urban environments with signalized intersections and mixed traffic has been launched in Brussels in Belgium.
The Managing Automated Vehicles Enhances Network (MAVEN) project is a thee-year project, with €3.15m (US$3.5m) of EU funding under the European Commission’s (EC) Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Program. Highly automated vehicles and cooperative ITS (C-ITS) technology using both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications will get more and more prevalent in the near future. By combining both technologies, the guidance of connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) could considerably improve traffic flow, particularly in urban areas.
The MAVEN project will develop infrastructure-assisted platoon organization and negotiation algorithms for the management of automated vehicles at signalized intersections and corridors. The algorithms will extend and connect in-vehicle systems for trajectory and maneuver planning, which will connect to infrastructure systems for adaptive traffic light optimization. Traffic lights will adapt their signal timing to facilitate the better movement of organized platoons, which will provide substantially better use of existing infrastructure capacity, increasing traffic efficiency by reducing vehicle delays, and the lowering of vehicle emissions.
The MAVEN project will: build a system prototype for both field tests and extensive modeling for impact assessment; contribute to the development of enabling technologies, such as communication standards and high-precision maps; and develop ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) techniques that will include provisions for vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. MAVEN will also include a user assessment, and the development of a roadmap for the introduction of vehicle-road automation to support road authorities in understanding changes in their role, and the tasks of traffic management systems.
The project will conclude with a white paper on The management of automated vehicles in a smart city environment, which will be written to position the MAVEN results in the broader perspective of passenger transport in smart/future cities, and to embed them with smart city principles and technologies, as well as service delivery.
The project will be coordinated by the DLR German Aerospace Center and led by Dynniq Netherlands. Participants will include: Hyundai’s European Technical Center (Germany); the Czech Technical University (CTU); TomTom Development Germany; MAP Traffic Management BV (Netherlands); and POLIS (Promotion of Operational Links with Integrated Services), the European network of cities and regions developing innovative transport technologies and policies. The project’s three demonstration cities are: Helmond (Netherlands), Braunschweig (Germany), and the London Borough of Greenwich (UK).
MAVEN is organizing a stakeholders’ workshop targeting local authorities on November 15, in Barcelona, Spain. The aim of this first MAVEN stakeholder consultation workshop is to discuss and review the preliminary system concept, use case descriptions, and create an assessment and demonstration plan. The workshop has been arranged back to back with a workshop on Cooperative-ITS and cities, jointly organized by the European CIMEC and CODECS projects, which will take place on November 14.
