ROADVIEW demos: The pathway towards technological success

After several months of hard work and commitment, the ROADVIEW team is on the verge of an exciting milestone: integrating the project’s software and technology into actual components and vehicles. This step has the ambition to showcase the effectiveness of ROADVIEW’s solutions for autonomous driving, especially under harsh weather conditions. Starting in August 2024, a total of five demos will take place across various locations in Europe, proving ROADVIEW’s innovative contributions to autonomous driving. The demos are especially crucial as they test and demonstrate the viability of the decision-making systems and infrastructure-based functionalities, the core of ROADVIEW technology.

The first demo is expected to take place in August 2024 in Turkey. Led by FORD and utilising vehicles from FGI, VTT, and FORD itself, the demo will demonstrate early versions of components designed to enhance data logging and filtering, quality assessment, system perception, and its control and decision-making ability in harsh weather conditions.

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Figure 1. FORD's autonomous driving development truck

A second demo will occur between June 2025 and February 2026 in the Finnish Lapland. Led by VTT and using its autonomous car, the demo will validate the ROADVIEW system and how it works together to understand its surroundings, accurately recognise the weather conditions, and share its location using detailed maps, while making decisions based on the weather.

In October 2025, two more demos will be launched. Demo 3, led by THI in its facilities in Germany, will demonstrate the integrated perception system together with the noise models for challenging weather conditions in the X-in-the-loop environment, a controlled setup that simulates real-world conditions. In this demo, THI’s BMW 8 vehicle will navigate freely on an empty test track while the surroundings are simulated, meticulously evaluating the system’s performance under diverse weather conditions.

Demo 4, led by FORD in Turkey, will showcase the automated driving of an SAE Level 4 trailer-mounted truck, a highly automated vehicle that can perform all driving tasks without human intervention, in extreme weather conditions on a Turkish highway. This demonstration will highlight the system’s adaptability in handling various scenarios such as lane keeping, following, overtaking, merging, and exiting, incorporating innovative technology from the ROADVIEW project.

Demo 5, under AVL’s leadership, marks the culmination of the ROADVIEW project. Scheduled for August 2026, this final demonstration will integrate all ROADVIEW components, showcasing a highly automated passenger car navigating a defined urban driving scenario on a test track in Germany. The vehicle will adeptly handle urban traffic scenarios with the inclusion of pedestrian and cyclist dummies, emphasising its advanced capabilities. The demonstration, conducted in real or artificially emulated severe weather conditions, will spotlight the integration of weather-aware decision-making and advanced perception modules into the AVL AD Platform.

As ROADVIEW propels into its next phase, the project marks a significant stride towards shaping the future of autonomous driving. Each DEMO will underscore ROADVIEW’s commitment to advancing the field of automated driving across Europe while providing a platform to promote the project’s technology and its further uptake.