AWARD
All Weather
Autonomous Real logistics operations and Demonstrations
Connected and automated vehicles can be
seen as a revolution in the global automotive industry, bringing a new mobility
paradigm and having a huge impact on several economic sectors such as the logistics
industry. Significant progress has been made in the field of autonomous
truck driving with numerous prototypes. However, there is still a gap to
fill in order to ensure the uptake of this
breakthrough technology and the future advent of an overall autonomous
logistic chain. The current inabilities autonomous heavy-duty vehicles
to work with the right safety and functional level for 24/7 availability (e.g. harsh weather conditions) hinder their
deployment, along with the lack of a harmonized regulatory framework.
AWARD will bring disruptive change to the
trucking industry, fleet operators, and the whole logistics sector. It will do
this by contributing to the accelerated deployment of innovative, connected and automated freight transport
solutions in Europe and around the world. AWARD aims at developing and enabling
to deploy a safe autonomous transportation system in a wide range of
real-life use cases in a variety of different scenarios. This encompasses the
development of autonomous driving system (ADS) capable of handling adverse
environmental conditions such as heavy rain, snowfall, fog. The ADS solution
will be based on multiple sensor modalities to address 24/7 availability. The
ADS will then be integrated into multiple vehicle types used in low-speed
areas.
Finally, these vehicles will be deployed, integrated and operated in a variety of real-life use
cases to validate their value in the application and identify any
limitations: forklift (un)loading in warehouses and industrial plants, hub-to-hub
shuttle service on open road, automated baggage dispatching in airports,
container transfer operations and vessel loading in ports.
Logistics operations will be optimized thanks
to a new fleet management system that will act as a control tower, gathering
all information from subsystems (vehicles, road sensors, etc.) to coordinate
the operations and protect vulnerable road users. This work should then
enable commercial exploitation of the technology and policy recommendations for
certifications processes.
The project started in January 2021 and will run for 3
years.
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This project has received funding from the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under Grant Agreement No. 101006817. The content of this website
reflects only the author’s view. Neither the European Commission nor the
INEA are responsible for any use that may be made of the information it
contains.