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Another project born out of the project creation workshop series as SAFER hosted in 2021, with the mission to create strong application to the Horizon Europe framework program, has startup; ROADVIEW – Robust Automated Driving in Extreme Weather.

Complex environment and traffic conditions have a major impact on the traffic safety and operations of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). Weather affects not only the vehicle performance but also the roadway infrastructure, thereby increases the risk of collision and traffic scenarios variations. So far, most automated vehicles have been primarily trained and tested under optimal weather and road conditions with clear visibility. However, the systems will have to prove that they are equally reliable and accurate under any weather and road condition before they can see widespread acceptance and adoption.

Horizon Europe granted the research consortium ROADVIEW (Robust Automated Driving in Extreme Weather) 10 million euros to solve challenging autonomous driving problems using AI. The project aims to develop AI-based robust and cost-efficient in-vehicle perception and decision-making systems with enhanced performance under harsh weather conditions.

“ROADVIEW will develop a unique approach to automated mobility, so that autonomous vehicles can have more powerful and reliable onboard perception and control technologies addressing complex environmental conditions.”, says Eren Aksoy, ROADVIEW Project Coordinator at Halmstad University.

ROADVIEW integrates a complex in-vehicle system-of-systems able to perform advanced environment and traffic recognition and prediction and determine the appropriate course of action of a CAV in a real-world environment, including harsh weather conditions. The project develops an embedded in-vehicle perception and decision-making system based on enhanced sensing, localisation, and improved object/person classification, including vulnerable road users. Its ground-breaking innovations are grounded on a cost-effective multisensory setup, sensor noise modelling and filtering, collaborative perception, testing by simulation-assisted methods and integration and demonstration under different scenarios and weather conditions.

Gathers experts in the field
The ROADVIEW consortium is a perfect combination of a group of leading universities, research institutes, high-tech SMEs, and industry.

“Beyond their research excellence, the consortium members bring a unique portfolio of testing sites and testing infrastructure, ranging from hardware-testing facilities and rain and wind tunnels to test tracks north of the Arctic Circle”, says Eren Aksoy.

ROADVIEW implements the co-programmed European Partnership “Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility” (CCAM) partnership by contributing to the development of more powerful, fail-safe, resilient and weather-aware technologies. 

Halmstad University is the main project coordinator of the consortium of 15 partners. The total budget is about 10 million Euro and the project will be concluded in August 2026. SAFER’s research area Systems for accident prevention and automated driving will host the project.

Involved partners:

• Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Finland
• University of Warwick, United Kingdom
• Technical University of Ingolstadt, Germany
• Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Sweden
• CEREMA - Centre d'etudes et d'expertise sur les risques l'environnement la mobilite et l'amenagement, France
• RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB, Sweden
• Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, Finland
• Synthetic Data Solutions AB, Sweden
• Aurora Snowbox Oy, Finland
• Sensible 4 Oy, Finland
• Konrad GmbH, Germany
• Ford Otomotiv Sanayi A. S, Turkey
• Canon Research Centre France S.A.S., France
• ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Germany
• Accelopment Schweiz AG, Switzerland

ROADVIEW receives funding under the call topic HORIZON-CL5-2021-D6-01-01 – Safe, Resilient Transport and Smart Mobility services for passengers and goods.