Infrastructure-Based Digital Twins for Cooperative, Connected, Automated Driving and Smart Road Services

Abstract

Driving requires continuous decision making from a driver taking into account all available relevant information. Automating driving tasks also automates the related decisions. However, humans are very good at dealing with bad quality, fuzzy, informal and incomplete information, whereas machines generally require solid quality information in a formalized format. Therefore, the development of automated driving functions relies on the availability of machine-usable information. A digital twin contains quality controlled information collected and augmented from different sources, ready to be supplied to such an automated driving function. An information model that describes all conceivably relevant information is necessary. To this end, a list of requirements that such an information model should meet is proposed and each requirement is argued for. Based on the anticipated services and applications that such a system should support, a collection of requirements for system architecture is derived. Information modeling is performed for selected relevant information groups. A system architecture has been proposed and validated with three different implementations, addressing several different applications to support decisions at a highway tunnel construction site in Austria and throughout the Test Bed Lower Saxony in Germany.

System and ODD descriptions and their consequences for Vehicle Safety and Automated Mobility

“…If numerous traffic participants and the infrastructure are sharing information, a digital twin or a CCAM Decision Support Platform [19] may be a beneficial system implementation for collecting, composing and distributing information in a consolidated, unambiguous, safe and secure way. Thus, the ODDs and capabilities of the different traffic participants may be relevant information to enable (automated) cooperation for a distributed control algorithms, see also the ISAD example in Section VIII.…”

“…Again, a CCAM Decision Support Platform might provide the basis for such communication (cf. [19]). A further example for illustration can be found in K in Appendix C.…”

“…Infrastructure Support for Automated Driving (ISAD) is a concept, where infrastructure intents to deliver information in a way that connected, automated vehicles can do better decisions for navigation, maneuvering, as well as stabilization & control (compare [19], [26], [27] chapter 2). Hence it is an example for collaboration of infrastructure with vehicles to manage their ODDs actively.…”

“…infrastructure could support connected vehicle dramatically by providing the information of the current speed limit with respect to time and space. Technical implications for provisioning such information can be found in [19].…”

“…This poses a challenge, because every ADAS system designer may select different ODD parameters and every country or region may prohibit platooning based on arbitrarily simple or complex rules based on yet another set of parameters. Nevertheless, if cooperation between manufacturers and infrastructure operators can be established and information meets the requirements stated in [19], the utilization of platooning and the related benefits in energy efficiency and increased throughput (traffic capacity) can be promoted.…”