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The Safe, Sustainable Transport system

It is imperative that the transportation system of the future is both sustainable and safe. AstaZero is a leading organization committed to driving research in key areas such as electrification, connectivity, automation, active safety and cyber security to facilitate this transition towards a sustainable and secure transportation system.

The transport system will also change towards increasing automation, leading to greater integration between vehicles and clouds, various control towers and other vehicles. Automation and integration present great opportunities for lowering energy consumption, increasing vehicle utilization, reducing congestion and more. However, they also, introduce new vulnerabilities such as hacking, sensitivity to adverse weather conditions, and increased reliance on a stable electricity supply. Enabling research and development in all these areas is of great importance and a core mission for AstaZero.

Automation of vehicles and Active Safety of vehicles

Automation and increased active safety functions in vehicles are two trends that are happening simultaneously. Many companies and research teams are working on the automation of small and large pods and trucks for goods transport, for example. Vehicle rating organizations such as Euro NCAP, have been testing active safety functions for many years, continuously adapting the test protocols to consider new types of functions when assessing performance. Automated vehicles will operate in much more integrated and complex systems and environments than vehicles have done historically, posing new needs for research experiments and tests of system integration, cyber security, edge computing, connectivity, and other aspects. The trends of automation and increased active safety will continue for many years to come. Therefore, AstaZero also focuses on supporting research and development of active safety functions in parallel with the work put into transport systems and vehicle automation.

Electrification and Hydrogen

The current electrification of the transport system interacts with the automation trend. Some aspects of electrification are made simpler or at lower investment levels when automation is added. For example, an automated truck in a logistics centre can have a smaller battery if it can charge more often based on current mission planning and when time permits. However, electrification also brings new challenges. For instance, local charging stations used simultaneously may require more power than what the grid permits, requiring local energy storage solutions. To a large extent, similar challenges need to be solved when considering hydrogen power. At AstaZero, these topics and more can be researched and developed. The neutral and open nature of AstaZero also simplifies multi-disciplinary projects and optimization on a system level.

Connectivity, Edge and the Cloud

Similar to the case of electrification, the current trends of increased use of technologies such as edge, connectivity and the cloud, are interacting with the automation of vehicles. If a vehicle requires certain prerequisites to be automated, such as the possibility of remote driving or infrastructure-based compute via edge, research and development are necessary. Through partnerships and internal capabilities, AstaZero provides research and development capabilities for vehicle and infrastructure-based stakeholders alike.

Policymaking and Development of Static Infrastructure

Rules and regulations need to be developed to enable a safe, sustainable automated transport system in the future. In some cases, policies need to be tested in experiments to understand different aspects, such as not having detrimental effects or the accuracy in achieving the regulatory goals. Guidelines for static infrastructure such as roads, off-ramps and loading bays may also need to be adapted. Multi-disciplinary research and development projects within both fields are possible at AstaZero.

Creation of Test scenarios and Test methods

To be able to check that an active safety function works as intended, or that an automated vehicle behaves correctly under all intended circumstances, test methods are necessary. Other test methods are needed to collect data for research topics such as human reactions to automated driving. Test methods range from simple scenarios intended just to verify the performance of a sensor all the way up to complex scenarios for automated vehicles. Depending on the test purpose, some methods can be designed for a high level of automation and fast data production while others involving much test equipment and test persons may take longer to carry out. AstaZero has expert competence in scenario design, which complements the competence of researchers or customers to jointly create high-quality, repeatable scenarios with good precision in measuring the important characteristics of the system under test.

Test targets, Test control and Equipment

To carry out tests, test equipment is necessary. These consist of target carriers that can move dummy targets such as cars, motorcycles, cycles and pedestrians. Testing of automated vehicles and transport systems, additional equipment and systems are needed as well, such as connectivity, connected infrastructure-based systems like traffic signs or traffic lights and stationary traffic environment elements such as building walls, lane markers and sidewalks. Moreover, all interactive parts of a test need to be controlled during a test. AstaZero has all the equipment, systems and test control to enable both research and development testing from straightforward active safety scenarios to complex scenarios for the automated transport system.

Operational Design Domains for Automated vehicles

In an automated transport system, reliability, robustness and resilience will be of key importance. Thus, describing under which conditions a system is designed to operate also becomes important. These conditions are generally known as the Operational Design Domain (ODD) concept. The ODD for a vehicle can consist of many different elements such as weather, lighting, road conditions, as well as connectivity quality and availability of clear road markings or signs. Testing a vehicle in its intended ODD becomes important. For that reason, AstaZero conducts research and development into the repeatable creation of various elements of ODDs.