The PoDIUM demonstration events officially began on 9th of April, with the German Living Lab hosting the first live demonstration at a test junction in Lehr, a suburb of Ulm. Led by our partner Ulm University, in collaboration with Bosch, Nokia, and University Duisburg-Essen, the event highlighted how automated vehicles can interact in real-time to manage complex traffic scenarios safely and efficiently.
Thelive demonstration of the German Living Lab’s Use Case demonstrated cooperative corridor management for enhanced safety and efficiency. The scenario involved a road lane blocked by a vehicle, while two Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) approach from opposite directions. The vehicle in the free lane gives way to the vehicle blocked behind the obstacle, ensuring traffic continues to flow smoothly. Project partners could experience this through a series of test drives, observing the vehicles perform this coordinated manoeuvre in public traffic.
The event continued with technical presentations from project partners offering insight into the technologies enabling the demonstration, which focus on multi-connectivity for reliable communication.
- Steffen Schulz (Nokia) explained the mobile communication used for the transmission of data in the use case, focusing on 5G mmWave, which enables faster communication.
- Amr Rizk (University Duisburg-Essen) presented a multi-connectivity scheduler that enhances transmission reliability and throughput through adaptive multi-path routing
- Alexander Scheible (Ulm University) provided insights into the server environment model used in the demonstration and how to ensure trust in data sources, along with the object tracking method.
- Christian Eilers (Bosch) provided more details on the cooperative manoeuvre planner that enables interaction between the vehicles involved in the manoeuvre.
- Tobias Müller (Bosch) introduced function offloading in the Living Lab, enabling complex processing to take place on edge servers rather than within the vehicle.
The event was followed the next day by the project’s 6th plenary meeting. The consortium reviewed progress, aligned on next steps, and discussed the upcoming demonstrations in the Spanish and Italian Living Labs, as well as preparations for the PoDIUM Final Event.
This first demonstration marked a major milestone for PoDIUM, validating key technologies for connected and cooperative automated mobility (CCAM) and underlining the potential of reliable, real-time interaction between vehicles and infrastructure in Europe.
Watch the demonstration in action below!
