On 15th October 2021, the consortium of the EU funded project ICT4CART held its final event at the ITS World Congress in Hamburg, Germany. Bringing together key stakeholders from the private sector, academia, research community, public and European institutions, the ICT4CART final event offered a unique opportunity to showcase the significant results achieved by the consortium over the last 36 months.
During the event, Dr. Vasilis Sourlas from the ISENSE GROUP of ICCS, Project Manager of the ICT4CART, offered an overview of the project’s scope and goals, which was to design, implement and test a versatile ICT infrastructure that will enable the transition towards higher levels of automation (up to L4) in real-life conditions.
ICT4CART and automated driving offer solutions that will improve the daily lives of European citizens, increasing the level of comfort during transportation, reducing the traffic congestion and achieving greater road safety, as well as reducing the number of accidents and air pollution. At the same time, ICT4CART has developed possible scenarios, business models and pricing policies, which will allow the immediate use of the technologies from the smart transportation ecosystem, creating new business opportunities. The technologies that were developed during the project, fill the gaps that existed in the field of automated driving, facilitating hybrid connectivity of automated vehicles, their accurate detection and the data confidentiality. They were tested in real-life conditions at four pilot sites in Austria, Germany, Italy and the Italian-Austrian border, covering different circumstances and environments.
The tests were concluded with great success and proved the excellent performance and reliability of the hybrid communication infrastructure, allowing automated driving of even higher levels. Leading to a future where automated driving will be a reality, WiFi radio communication technology, ETSI ITS G5, used for communication between vehicles or with the road infrastructure, which was developed during ICT4CART, will remain at the test sites in Italy and Austria even after the completion of project.
The ICT4CART project confirmed that automated vehicles are not a utopia, but a reality of Europe’s future roads! For this reason, it is necessary to ensure even greater safety for automated vehicles, through the development of innovative solutions and the improvement of technology, allowing the transition to higher levels of automated driving in the near future. More information about the ICT4CART project and the Final Event can be found at www.ict4cart.eu
