Today’s driver assistance systems offer comfort and safety in sound environmental conditions. However, in harsh environment conditions – when needed most – systems stop working due to reduced sensor information quality. Targeting to the area of highly automated driving the improvement of perception, decision and planning under adverse conditions is one of the main challenges to be addressed. RobustSENSE is a project aiming at automated and safe mobility. Its goal is making systems able to cope with real world requirements under all environmental conditions. The RobustSENSE system introduces reliable, secure and trustable sensors and software by implementing self-diagnosis, adaptation and robustness. By managing diversity, complexity and safety it increases yield, robustness and reliability. RobustSENSE develops metrics to measures sensor system reliability on every level of assistance and automation systems as well as investigate approaches to improve the system. RobustSENSE thus aims at enhancing the robustness of all sensing methods and algorithms required for advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving. RobustSENSE moves from a platform consisting of several independent subsystems to a holistic approach. RobustSENSE introduces both, reliability measures and self monitoring across all levels of the system allowing two things: 1) Taking appropriate actions and algorithms on the respective system level to react on performance reduction caused by technical failure or changing environment conditions and 2) propagating reliability measures to a higher system level for decision making and taking appropriate actions therein. Thus, the area of operation of highly automated driving functions is permanently adapted to the present available performance of the perception and decision making system in order to guarantee a safe driving status at any time.

The automotive industry faces tremendous challenges in addressing decarbonization through electrification, developing future solutions for inclusive, safe and affordable mobility. Many of these changes require a radical re-thinking of existing development processes, with the share of software in modern mobility solutions continuously increasing. The rising importance of the software layer results in the so-called software-defined vehicle (SDV). Automotive software will be developed and adapted in continuous cycles. Therefore an abstraction from the underlying hardware needs to be implemented. As a result, the automotive industry is transitioning to an agile software development process. The dramatic increase of software and complexity, along with the advances of international competition in this domain, calls for an approach, in which non-differentiating software is developed jointly as open source. To address these challenges, the EU, together with industry, governments, and research institutions, have launched the European SDV Ecosystem. To turn this into reality, this proposal outlines the vision and activities for a Coordination and Support Action. FEDERATE (Software-Defined Vehicle Support and Coordination Project) aims to bring together all relevant stakeholders to accelerate the development of an SDV Ecosystem, to foster a vibrant European community and orchestrate the SDV R&D&I activities. The consortium of FEDERATE is formed by major European OEMs, automotive tiers, semiconductor companies, relevant industry associations and industrial SDV initiatives, including the Eclipse SDV WG, and supported by a scientific board. FEDERATE will work towards a common understanding on the vision of the SDV program and create an orchestrated advice for current and future projects in the SDV program. In addition, recommendations for future calls are prepared in alignment with a Roadmap and Joint Vision Document for accelerated SDV R&D&I, created as part of the CSA

ENABLE-S3 will pave the way for accelerated application of highly automated and autonomous systems in the mobility domains automotive, aerospace, rail and maritime as well as in the health care domain. Virtual testing, verification and coverage-oriented test selection methods will enable validation with reasonable efforts. The resulting validation framework will ensure Europeans Industry competitiveness in the global race of automated systems with an expected market potential of 60B€ in 2025. Project results will be used to propose standardized validation procedures for highly automated systems (ACPS). The technical objectives addressed are: 1. Provision of a test and validation framework that proves the functionality, safety and security of ACPS with at least 50% less test effort than required in classical testing. 2. Promotion of a new technique for testing of automated systems with physical sensor signal stimuli generators, which will be demonstrated for at least 3 physical stimuli generators. 3. Raising significantly the level of dependability of automated systems due to provision of a holistic test and validation platform and systematic coverage measures, which will reduce the probability of malfunction behavior of automated systems to 10E-9/h. 4. Provision of a validation environment for rapid re-qualification, which will allow reuse of validation scenarios in at least 3 development stages. 5. Establish open standards to speed up the adoption of the new validation tools and methods for ACPS. 6. Enabling safe, secure and functional ACPS across domains. 7. Creation of an eco-system for the validation and verification of automated systems in the European industry. ENABLE-S3 is strongly industry-driven. Realistic and relevant industrial use-cases from smart mobility and smart health will define the requirements to be addressed and assess the benefits of the technological progress.

The volume of the commercial freight sector is expected to increase towards 2050, especially in the medium to heavy truck modes (N2 and N3 type). However, in parallel to that, the recent European climate goals bring challenges for the transport sector. Given the fact that the typical vehicle development cycles can be of 5-7 years, an immediate collective and collaborative action from the research organizations, business strategists, technology companies and OEMs is necessary. The result of this would be to attain high-TRL concepts that are ready to roll out in the European and global market, where there is more room for a gradual adoption at the consumer side. In any case, given the fact that there are substantial technological and business steps are being taken in the zero-emission transport field, the next 30 years towards 2050 potentially requires more dramatic changes than the last 30 years (i.e., since 1990). NextETRUCK aims to address different optimization challenges regarding tomorrow’s urban and suburban logistics for medium duty vehicles into systems-approach that is reliable, strongly integrated, affordable, and flexible enough to re-applied to different applications via dedicated tools/methods. The overarching objective of the NextETRUCK project is to play a pioneering role in the decarbonization of the vehicle fleets, via demonstrating next generation e-mobility concepts consisting of holistic, innovative, affordable, competitive and synergetic zero emission vehicles and ecosystems for tomorrow’s medium freight haulage, while aiming significant leap of knowledge at component, vehicle, fleet, infrastructure and ecosystem levels, via innovations at e-powertrain components and architectures, smart charging infrastructure and management, improved thermal design of the cabin, fleet management systems with IoT and digital tools.

With the goal of accelerating the mass market take-up of ultra-high-performance batteries for battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV), MARBEL will base its approaches, solutions and innovations around the versatility concept as an axis within the entire project. It will focus on the need for fast charging and long-lasting batteries to boost end user demands, while applying high modularity and easy assembly and developing novel testing methodologies for safety, profitability and circularity. MARBEL will design, develop and demonstrate new modular, compact, lightweight and high-performance battery packs together with flexible and robust battery management systems for these BEV and PHEV, while maintaining safety levels, allowing fast, high quality and cost-effective large-scale production and following the “made by Ecodesign” principles. A set of modules easy to pack together and to disassemble would ease the manufacture and dismantling of different battery configurations sharing the same production process and common elements. MARBEL will develop and qualify future and innovative performance- and safety- related test procedures of developed functionalities such as the use of miniaturized housings, a flexible test-bench simulating integration-in-EV conditions (electric Vehicle In-the-Loop, eVIL) and artificial intelligence as a tool to reduce the time of laboratory experiments. MARBEL aims at a triple win, for people, business and planet. MARBEL is expected to generate scientific and technological impacts, boost the appearance and consolidation of new players (especially SMEs) and business models, reinforce the European position in the global battery market, and contribute to environmental and societal targets. MARBEL consortium is made of 16 partners from 8 different European countries, representative of the aimed multi-stakeholder collaboration and business drivers required for developing the battery pack of the future.