Infrastructure-Supported Cooperative Automated Driving in Transition Areas

Automated driving is not possible everywhere. Limited by the Operational Design Domain (ODD) of vehicle automation functions, Transitions of Control (ToC) are required. If the ToCs fail, Minimum Risk Maneuvers (MRM) are executed, resulting in stopped vehicles on the road. As a result, traffic is negatively impacted, esp. when the number of automated vehicles (AVs) rises. To reduce such negative impacts, the EU-H2020 TransAID project has designed novel infrastructure-assisted traffic management measures using V2X communications, and evaluated them via simulations and field trials. This paper shows how prototypic real-world tests were performed to validate feasibility of the TransAID measures on public road and test track trials. The obtained results show that infrastructure support and V2X communication can contribute to drastically reduce the need to perform ToCs, MRMs, and hence the risk of blocked roads.