Piloting Automated Driving on European Roads

Project Information

L3Pilot

Grant agreement ID: 723051

DOI

10.3030/723051

Project closed

EC signature date 24 May 2017

Start date 1 September 2017

End date 31 October 2021

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 45 925 461,19

EU contribution

€ 35 960 979,39

Coordinated by

VOLKSWAGEN AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - L3Pilot (Piloting Automated Driving on European Roads)

Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2021-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Large-scale piloting in open road conditions is necessary to better understand requirements for enhancing automated driving (AD). The data from road tests help to pinpoint the areas that require further development before automated vehicles enter product refinement and deployment. Above all, knowledge on user experience and requirements for marketable vehicles are needed.

The most essential expected impact of AD for the society is safety. Globally traffic accidents kill over 1 million persons annually, much more than all ongoing wars counted together. A positive effect in the reduction of accidents was expected for most of the analysed scenarios in L3Pilot.

The objective of the project was to test and study the viability of automated driving as a safe and efficient means of transportation. To achieve this overall goal, several technical objectives had to be defined and met before first empirical, data-led guesses of automated driving potential in changing transportation and mobility can be presented.

The work did not focus on road tests alone for collecting vehicle data and users’ impressions, analysing, and reporting the results. Large-scale piloting could not tackle all open questions on possible impacts and driver-vehicle interaction due to safety issues. To partly overcome these issues, detailed supplementary experiments addressed these matters.

Furthermore, the aim of the project was not only to pilot automated driving, but also to study user reactions, preferences, and willingness to use automated vehicles. This information enabled planning business scenarios and the deployment of AD. Piloting and supplementary studies carried out paved the way for this aim. Furthermore, the exploitation of the project results was also one key goal of the project. Especially, Code of Practice created for public use was seen an important factor boosting the development of automated driving systems globally.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Project piloting consisted of some 750 test persons driving more than 400,000 kilometres on motorways and in urban areas. The eight supplementary studies focused on specific research questions delving deeper into the behavioural dynamics of the test drivers. These studies comprised some 600 subjects. The Global User Acceptance Survey was conducted to analyse user acceptance, attitudes, and expectations to answer: What are the attitudes and acceptance of SAE L3 automated cars, and what factors influence attitudes and acceptance? The survey covered some 36,000 respondents globally.

This core area was then complemented by dissemination and exploitation activities, preliminary business and deployment plans. Dissemination activities established L3Pilot as the European reference project for automated driving. Numerous communications measures were taken throughout the project. Totally 22 public deliverables were written to collect the findings for a wider public. Four showcases were arranged for the experts and general public to get acquainted with the project. Open data repositories for parties outside the consortium were provided consisting of Global User Acceptance Survey data, data from the pilots and drone datasets.

The main results of the L3Pilot work are highlighted as follows:

- Comprehensive methodology was created to study SAE L3 driving automation impacts.
- The consolidated database (CDB) was built for data analysis to enable the sharing of data from all the pilot sites to answer the project’s research questions.
- Results of the impact assessment on safety showed potential reductions in injury and fatal accidents within the operational design domains both in motorway and urban traffic.
- The global user acceptance survey showed that 42% of the respondents expressed an intention to use an SAE L3 automated car.
- Code of Practice created provides a comprehensive guideline for supporting the automotive industry and relevant stakeholders in the development of automated driving technology.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project advanced the state of the art by creating a driving automation testing system with the methodology and data management techniques for field conditions and showed the safety potential and user acceptance of automated driving.

A great deal of effort in the project was put into user experiences and expectations concerning the automated vehicles. Both the expectations and the experiences were clearly positive. The assumed usefulness of L3 cars was associated with their perceived comfort and safety.

The results are still somewhat inconclusive, implying that the systems are not yet mature enough, especially concerning the limited operational design domain of these vehicles.

The main results of the safety impact assessment indicated that overall, automated driving is capable of reducing injury accidents. A positive effect in terms of reduction of accidents was shown for most of the analysed scenarios.

To conclude: the project provided for the European players SAE L3 level automated driving testing system, carried out extensive user tests and pushed the state of the art in automated driving showing the safety potential of it. Despite the progress made in the project, the goal still remains the same: to make automated vehicles operate in a reliable manner in all conditions and in unforeseen events. If the operational design domain sets the limits to the operation of the vehicles in good weather conditions outside complex traffic scenarios, it means that the benefits of automated driving (AD) will be small. L3Pilot provided the basis for the successor project Hi-Drive to extend the operational design domain of automated vehicles toward high-automation.

The shift to automation requires everyone from automakers to consumers, insurers, planners, and officials at all levels of government to work together. Being proactive about guiding this technological change is essential.

Figure: project structure and application