On 3 December, PoDIUM hosted a webinar highlighting its German Living Lab, part of a series featuring Living Labs in Spain, Germany, and Italy. The webinar explored multi-connectivity and cooperative corridor management for improved traffic management at complex urban intersections.
Priv.-Doz. Dr.-Ing. Michael Buchholz (Ulm University) first gave an introduction to the PoDIUM platform architecture and its three-layer structure. He introduced the German Living Lab and its Use Case, “Cooperative Corridor Management in the City of Ulm”, highlighting the location of the pilot site, which is equipped with various sensors and multi-connectivity capabilities. This Use Case involves both Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and connected Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Two scenarios will be tested on a two-lane road. In the first one, one lane is blocked, requiring CAVs travelling in opposite directions to synchronise their movements to pass safely in the same lane. In the second scenario, a cyclist connected via a smartphone replaces one of the CAVs, adding complexity to the coordination.
Steffen Schulz (Nokia) followed with an overview of the 5G mmWave network deployed at the test site. He presented the installation and the positive initial results. In the trial, 5G mmWave is used with other communication technologies to ensure the smooth flow of information. The first test results regarding coverage, latency, and throughput show that mmWave can also be used locally in intersections for communication with moving vehicles.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Amr Rizk (University Duisburg-Essen) elaborated on multi-connectivity-based adaptive data traffic for cooperative corridor management. He detailed the communication architecture used at the German Living Lab, which employs different types of connectivity and redundancy for enhanced bandwidth and reliability. The system includes single connectivity, multi-connectivity, and hybrid communication, supported by a ComPC inside vehicles, a Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) server, and scheduler software. These elements ensure the reliability of the CCAM (Connected, Cooperative, and Automated Mobility) messages.
Alexander Scheible (Ulm University) provided insights into the Digital Twin used in the Use Case, focusing on ensuring trust in data sources. The Digital Twin fuses the information received from different sources, such as the VRUs, the CAVs, and the infrastructure sensors, to deliver a comprehensive view of the situation on the road. The Digital Twin uses a model-based algorithm for multi-object tracking, where the model parameters are continuously monitored to ensure the performance and reliability of the tracking algorithm and, ultimately, ensure trust in the Digital Twin itself.
Christian Eilers (Bosch) concluded with an explanation of the cooperative maneuver planner. This real-time CCAM service is used for ad-hoc corridor management. It is based on a reliable digital twin and is running on a MEC server for low-latency communication. The cooperative maneuver planner is embedded into the PoDIUM platform architecture and employs a distributed approach for corridor detection to continuously analyse the road situation and orchestrate the connected, cooperative road users.
Couldn’t attend the webinar?
Catch up by watching the recording and accessing the presentations below:
- Introduction to the German Living Lab and Use Case – Priv.-Doz. Dr.-Ing. Michael Buchholz (Ulm University)
- Usage of 5G mmWave for CCAM – Steffen Schulz (Nokia)
- Multi-Connectivity based adaptive Data Traffic Steering for Cooperative Corridor – Prof. Dr.-Ing. Amr Rizk (University Duisburg-Essen)
- Trust Building for Data Sources of a Digital Twin – Alexander Scheible (Ulm University)
- Functional Design of the Cooperative Maneuver Planner – Christian Eilers (Bosch)