Queensland’s Cooperative & Automated Vehicle Initiative (CAVI)
AT THE FOREFRONT OF OF WORK ON CONNECTIVITY AND AUTOMATION FOR SAFER AND CLEANER ROADS
Associated projects:
- How automated vehicles will interact with road infrastructure
- Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving Safety Study
- Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot: Safety and user perceptions evaluation
Project partners: Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), iMOVE, Queensland Motor Accident Insurance Commission, and the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (QUT)
Background
CAVI is the Queensland Government’s program of work investigating the benefits of connectivity and automation technologies on our roads. Enabling vehicles to securely communicate and to perform tasks autonomously has potential to create safer, cleaner and more efficient roads. However, these benefits need to be clearly understood, and the only way to do this is to develop and test them such as through CAVI.
The Queensland Government’s Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) is delivering some of the key elements of CAVI through iMOVE. This included a connected vehicle trial involving over 355 drivers in Ipswich, and a Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving (CHAD) pilot with two research prototype platforms, one of which is a level 4 automated prototype vehicle.
Miranda Blogg, Director of CAVI understands the need for collaboration to pull off such an initiative.
“CAVI involves partnerships between government, industry and universities working in a collaborative, co-located environment,” she says. “This has enabled parties to develop and mature their products and services through shared learning.”
Choosing to include iMOVE in the mix was initially about, “… maximising TMR’s investment in this emerging space and streamlining our administration of these engagements,” says Miranda.
Once working with iMOVE a range of benefits became apparent, iMOVE guided the project development process by “translating project outcomes and intentions into logical milestones and identifying and suggesting solutions to inconsistencies,” says Miranda. iMOVE also connected TMR to “university experts and industry partners who work in the broader automated vehicles and C-ITS eco system,” she adds.
Amit Trivedi, Project Lead for the CHAD pilot, has been working closely with iMOVE for the last three years. He also sees great value in the connections and learning from each other.
“iMOVE provides a platform for industry partners such as TMR to access academic expertise through Australian universities,” he explains. “The collaborative environment provided by iMOVE provides benefits to the industry partners’ research projects by integrating contemporary research methodologies.”
The Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot (ICVP)
Running from September 2020 for 12 months, the pilot included 355 public participants using retrofitted connected technology in their vehicles for nine months, 29 connected roadside stations at traffic lights and a cloud and security system. This equipment generated real-time driver warnings to situations such as red lights, roadworks, road hazards, congestion, and presence of pedestrians and/or bike riders at intersections, allowing the project team to test how these warnings affect driver behaviour and offer safety benefits.
Data from the trial is already pointing towards useful outcomes. Says Miranda, “data generated through the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot is being analysed and preliminary results indicate the warnings have a positive impact on driver behaviour. The pilot has also been instrumental in the development of people, processes, and products that can be used by other governments and industry across Australia. For example, the Australian Integrated Multimodal EcoSystem (AIMES), Lexus Australia and Victorian Department of Transport are delivering a connected vehicle pilot in Melbourne which includes re-deployment of several of TMR’s pilot systems including the Security Credential Management System and cloud-based Central Station.”
“These findings are enabling TMR and partners to identify future research projects towards deepening understanding and also support decision-making about the use of connected vehicle technology in Australia, for example the impacts around maintenance and operation of the infrastructure technology over longer periods.”
“This is one of the first projects that has been able to collect multi-modal data and we already have great insights showing how people across Southeast Queensland link together different modes, such as e-scooters and trains, to get from A to B,” Dr Whitehead said.
Importantly the trial was designed to ensure that Australia is in step with what is happening globally.
“The pilot is aligned with European standards, ensuring industry and government’s people, processes, and products have matured in a way that will move Australia closer to deployment,’ says Miranda.
See the final report for this project at: Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot: Final reports
CHAD Pilot
TMR in partnership with QUT has two Renault vehicles (ZOE1 and ZOE2), to investigate safety benefits and impacts of automated vehicles up to level 4. ZOE1 is not an automated vehicle (AV), however ZOE2 has been developed as a level 4 prototype connected and automated vehicle (CAV). These research platforms are being used to understand automated driving in an Australian context, including readiness of our road assets (signs, lines etc) are for AVs, how drivers behave in response to AVs, how connected vehicle technologies can be integrated in automated technologies and the general performance of the technology.
In March 2021 the ZOE2 was used for trials at Mount Cotton in Queensland with 72 volunteers. The objective was to explore participants’ interactions with the vehicle while in automated mode, as well as the transition (handover) between manual and automated mode and vice versa.
Each participant in the study generated 110GB of data, predominantly via the LIDAR on the top and sides of the vehicle, the vehicle’s front and rear cameras, and the camera inside performing eye-tracking of the drivers.
An expert was in the vehicle for safety, and also to inform each participant about automated vehicle technology over the 30-minute automated drive. Community education and acceptance is an important part of the journey as automation becomes more common on our roads and is integral to all elements of CAVI.
Where next?
Understanding and introducing connected and automated technologies onto our roads is a long and winding process. CAVI is an important building block for Australian knowledge in this area and has opened the door for further research.
TMR is now working with the Australian Government to explore opportunities to deploy the ICVP design along 1,500 kilometres of the Bruce Highway, for use by government fleet vehicles and targeted participants.
These lessons are highly applicable throughout Australia, and other states and territories are watching and learning. Discussions are underway for next stage projects and iMOVE has worked with TMR on disseminating knowledge about CAVI via webinars:
