EuroFOT
| EuroFOT | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Type: Field operational test | |
| Tested system/service: Autonomous Systems | |
| Countries: France, Germany, Italy, Sweden | ? test users |
| 28 partners | 1000 vehicles |
| Active from 2008/05/01 to 2011/06/01 | |
| Contact | |
| http://www.eurofot-ip.eu | |
| Aria Etemad | |
| aetemad1@ford.com | |
| Ford Research & Advanced Engineering Europe Germany | |
| Catalogue entries | |
| Data catalogue | Tools catalogue |
| Data sets used in this FOT: No data set is |
The following tools were used in this FOT: No tool is linked |
euroFOT identified and coordinated an in-the-field testing of new Intelligent Vehicle Systems with the potential for improving the quality of European road traffic. This permitted assessing their effectiveness on actual roads, while determining how they perform towards the intended objectives. The field testing offered an early publicity of the technologies, and enabled the analysis of the user acceptance and its subsequent potential for market penetration.
Led by Ford, the project involved 28 partners, including major European vehicle manufacturers as well as leading automotive technology suppliers and research institutes, which worked together over a period of 50 months.
A selection of 8 systems has been tested in over 1000 vehicles from 9 European OEM brands.
European Integrated Project (IP) under Framework Program FP7, objective 6.1: ICT for mobility
Key milestones of the project
- May 2008: Start of project
- Sept 2008: Start Function Description and Research question elaboration
- Nov 2009: Piloting is completed
- Dec 2009: Start of FOT
- Jan 2010: Start data evaluation
- Nov 2010: End of FOT
- June 2012: End of project
Details of Field Operational Test
Start date and duration of FOT execution
Start: December 2009
Duration: 1 year
Geographical Coverage
The geographical coverage of the euroFOT project was Europe wide.
Depending on the level of consideration, different namings have been used:
Vehicle Management Centre: The VMC is an entity which can be seen as the overall management entity. Each VMC represents a country in Europe.
There were 4 VMCs in the euroFOT project:
- French VMC
- German VMC
- Italian VMC
- Swedish VMC
Operation Centre: An OC is a sub-entity of a VMC dealing with the operational management. one operation centre groups together different operation sites because they are connected through one or several aspects of the organisation (common data servers, common data acquisition system, common organisation)
There were 5 OCs:
- France
- Germany - OC1
- Germany - OC2
- Italy
- Sweden
Operation Site: An operation site is directly linked to an OEM. It deals with the site management and the OEM specific aspects (maintenance, dealers, ...). One operation centre may have one or more operation sites depending on the location of the dealership.
As an indicative number, there were 11 Operation Sites:
CEESAR West Paris, Ford Aachen Cologne, MAN Munich, VW Wolfsburg, BMW Munich, Daimler Sindelfingen, CRF Turin, Volvo Gothenburg, Vovlo the Netherlands & UK, Volvo Cars Gothenburg, Audi Ingolstad
Objectives
- Perform coordinated tests of Intelligent Vehicle Systems with ordinary drivers in real traffic
- Investigate performance, driver behaviour, and user acceptance
- Assess the impacts on safety, efficiency, and the environment using road data
- Apply a common European approach for Field Operational Tests
- Create awareness in the public and a wider socio-economic acceptance
Results
For over twelve months, one thousand cars and trucks equipped with advanced driver assistance systems travelled European roads, and, for most of them, at each turn, acceleration, and lane change, their movements were tracked and recorded. The field test focused on eight distinct vehicle functions that assist drivers in detecting hazards and avoiding accidents: Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Forward Collision Warning (FCW), Speed Regulation System (SRS), Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), Lane Departure Warning (LDW), Curve Speed Warning (CSW), safe human/machine interface and Fuel Efficiency Advisor (FEA). More than hundred terabytes of data were collected and analysed, providing the basis for the euroFOT consortium to assess the impact of these systems on our roads.
Lessons learned
If widely deployed across the EU, the systems studied by euroFOT could potentially reduce accidents and resources. The socio-economic assessment reveals a cost benefit ratio of 1.3 to 1.8 for ACC in trucks.
Using the ACC and FCW systems for cars and trucks, euroFOT determined that the costs of equipping the passenger cars and heavy trucks with the combined system leads to annual savings of approximately 1.2 billion EUR (passenger cars) and approximately 180 million EUR for heavy goods trucks.
Main events
2008.05.12-13 Kick-off meeting, Aachen (DE).
2008.07.30 Euronews: euroFOT in the media.
2008.11.16-20 ITS World Congress, New-York (USA).
2009.01.21 Volvo Cars showcasing euroFOT.
2009.09.24 euroFOT at the ITS World Congress in Stockholm (SE).
2009.09.24 The euroFOT video released.
2009.10.1-2 euroFOT General Assembly, Brussels (BE).
2009.11.5-6 euroFOT Annual Review, Brussels (BE).
2010.04.19 The Italian VMC is starting.
2010.05.26 The French VMC is starting.
2010.06.7-10 euroFOT at the Transport Research Arena in Brussels (BE).
2010.07.14 Euronews: new euroFOT video on Futuris.
2010.10.25-29 euroFOT at ITS World Congress in Busan (KR).
2011.06.6-9 euroFOT at the ITS European Congress in Lyon (FR).
2011.10.16-20 euroFOT at the ITS World Congress in Orlando (USA).
2012.06.26 Final event and demonstration
Financing
Summary, type of funding and budget
Overall
21.6 Mio EUR
Public
European Commission contribution: 65% of overall cost, 13.9 Mio EUR
Private
35% of overall cost
Cooperation partners and contact persons
- Public Authorities: BASt
- Industry:
- Vehicle Manufacturer: Ford Research & Advanced Engineering Europe, BMW Research and Technology, Daimler, Fiat Group-CRF, MAN, Volvo Cars, Volvo Technology, Volkswagen
- Supplier: BOSCH, CONTINENTAL, DELPHI
- Users: --
- Universities: SAFER, ICCS, IKA, Würzburg (IZVW), Torino, ITS Leeds
- Research Institutes: CEESAR, CTAG, INRETS, TNO
- Others (specify): ADAS MC, Alcor, Allianz, EICT, ERTICO – ITS Europe, IMC
Main contact person
Aria Etemad Ford Research & Advanced Engineering Europe (FFA) Germany Project Coordinator aetemad1@ford.com + 49 (0) 241-9421-246
Project Officer:
Wolfgang Höfs wolfgang.hoefs@ec.europa.eu DG Information Society and Media
Applications and equipment
Applications tested
ADAS Systems: Forward Collision Warning, Adaptive Cruise Control, Speed Regulation Systems, Lane Departure Warning, Blind Spot Information System, Safe HMI (head-up display…), Curve Speed Warning, Fuel Efficiency Advisor
Vehicle
The FOTs were operated on fleets managed by the 4 Vehicle Management Centres (VMC), corresponding to the 4 countries: Sweden, Germany, Italy and France. The German VMC was constituted of 2 Operating Centres (OC) (Munich and Aachen).
French VMC
CEESAR: 5 high level equipped vehicles, 35 low level equipped vehicles.
German VMC - OC1 Munich
Ford: 100 customer owned vehicles and 2 Ford owned vehicles for the Curve Speed Warning testing with CTAG DAS installed MAN: 62 heavy duty trucks with CTAG DAS installed VW: 32 company vehicles with CTAG DAS installed
German VMC - OC2 Aachen
BMW: 15 leased vehicles using 3 separated waves of drivers with their proprietary DAS installed Daimler: 15 leased vehicles with 4 separated waves of drivers with their own DAS installed
Italian VMC
Fiat: 533 LDW and Control group vehicles
Swedish VMC
VCC: 100 company cars with the Nexcom DAS installed Volvo Technology: one fleet of 30 heavy duty trucks for the safety functions and 50 heavy duty trucks for the Fuel Efficiency Advisor function
Equipment carried by test users
Infrastructure
none.
Test equipment
460 data-loggers:
- 275 CAN-Only
- 150 CAN+Video
- 35 CAN+Video+extra sensors (eye tracker…)
CAN Data logger provided mostly by CTAG.
Methodology
Pre-simulation / Piloting of the FOT
A piloting will be organised in order to check the complete data chain and also organisational aspects of the Vehicle Management Centers.
Method for the baseline
French VMC: Cars are driven without using the system during 12 weeks, 10 weeks with the driver's car, 2 weeks with CEESAR's heavily equipped car.
German VMC - OC1:
German VMC - OC2: 1 month baseline without the system, 2 months with the system.
Italian VMC:
Swedish VMC: For the passenger car trials, the baseline will last 20 weeks.
Techniques for measurement and data collection
French VMC: The data collected in the driver's owned car will be transfered via GPRS. The data collected in the CEESAR cars will be picked up when the cars come back to CEESAR.
German VMC - OC1: data will be transferred via GPRS.
German VMC - OC2: BMW - CAN data will be transferred via UMTS, other data will be stored on hard drives and picked-up; Daimler - All data will be stored on hard drives and will be picked up every four weeks.
Italian VMC: No data loggers will be used, all datas will be collected through anonymous questionnaires (paper and on-line).
Swedish VMC: The datas will be either wirelessly transferred or picked up on hard drives.
Collected data
Raw data
Raw data are both in-vehicles signals and signals from extra sensors and video cameras, collected from the vehicle during operation (objective data) and the questionnaires answered by the driver during the FOT (subjective data). Data are transferred from the vehicles to the storage system at dedicated servers wirelessly (e.g. through GPRS- or UMTS-services) or through direct upload, performed by operators who access or even exchange the physical storage media in the vehicles. The following categories of raw data are considered:
- CAN-signals derived from the vehicle internal bus, describing the state of in-vehicle systems; The time base and signal content (e.g. vehicle speed with a time stamp at a resolution of 100 milliseconds), is in the data format of the data logging device.
- Video recordings showing the driver, the foot of driver, the front and rear of the vehicle.
- GPS-signal, often in the form of NMEA-format denoting the geo-position of the vehicle.
- Additional sensor-signals, added for the FOT, e.g. eye tracker, external radar, navigation device-status messages, e.g. vehicle is driving, all systems are working.
- Questionnaires. Answers received on paper, web-based or telephone interviews.
Processed data
Raw data need to be converted into other formats to be used for further analysis by specific software routines. Extensive computation is also needed for data synchronisation, video encoding, creating derived measures (combining two or more signals) and data reduction (creating events for specific interest). During the pre-processing, the data is enriched with additional information such as road classification, weather, traffic load, etc. For subjective data, the paper based questionnaires are converted to digital form. For video data, a complex process is needed to extract and annotate situation data without looking at the full content in real-time.
For more details on the data collecton, you can refer to the dedicated project deliverable:
D6.8 FOT Data http://www.eurofot-ip.eu/download/eurofotsp620120615v10dld68_fot_data.pdf
Availability of data
Instead of providing aggregated data on a public website for download for one year (i.e. publishing the data) the granting of access is now based on a research proposal that will be reviewed by owners of the data. Research proposal are addressed to the Management of euroFOT (see contact at http://www.eurofot-ip.eu). The accessible content, after successful review of the proposal, represents the large body of data that has been analysed to derive the results obtained in euroFOT. An exception has been made not to provide personal data, such as video and GPS position, as this would require the acceptance of all FOT participants. The site of access is at the site of the owner of the database and stored results can be extracted after their content has been reviewed and checked against the research proposal. All costs for the access - like training session, operator, and consumables - will be agreed upon before the analysis is started.
The access to the data ends one year after end of project that is June 31, 2013.
Recruitment goals and methods
~1000 drivers.
Exposure time depends on the functions. It varies from 4 months to 1 year.
Methods for the liaison with the drivers during the FOT execution
French VMC: An hotline will be available for the drivers.
German VMC - OC1: Ford will open an hotline, VW will use the usual dealer procedure to contact customers.
German VMC - OC2: The driver liaison principle will be used, meaning that specific persons will contact the driver. This contact will be done at least at the end of each session (every month) and may take place every two weeks for an informal discussion with the driver. The responsibility for driver liaison will be shared between the partners depending on practical considerations (e.g. residence of participants).
Italian VMC: A driver liaison centre/help desk will be established by the Italian partners.
Swedish VMC: The driver liaison will be OEM based and as limited as possible to let the drivers "forget" that they are subject of a study.
Methods for data analysis, evaluation, synthesis and conclusions
Sources of information
euroFOT on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/euroFOT?feature=mhee
Volvo Launching video: http://youtu.be/lREvNUVk2Ao
Volvo truck field test documentary: http://youtu.be/livi6RyU2ys
Euronews Futuris documentary: http://youtu.be/rEqpmO2uIPU
First Announcement of the Final Event (Teaser): http://youtu.be/8B5W3752G-U
Invitation to the final event: http://youtu.be/MB4I1iuBDJQ
