Automated driving is one of the trendy topics par excellence, but at the same time, the industry is increasingly looking for standardized rules and specifications that drive global standardization and collaborative approaches, as well as associated future-proof, safe, and reliable developments in this field. The 16th edition of the Open Auto Drive Forum impressively shows that this topic is gaining momentum and increasingly attracting interested parties. At the beginning of May 2021, 140 participants discussed progress and developments in the field of standardized autonomous driving. This time, 170 participants from the automotive sector met on September 16.
A wide variety of areas that make this topic so important for the industry were addressed and explained. Some examples: Ultra HD maps or a project that supports the creation of digital maps for better road damage detection. Another important program of the OADF conference was, as in previous events, the presentation of various organizations and their efforts and progress regarding standardization and automated driving.
But what exactly is the Open Auto Drive Forum all about? One of the main goals of the organizers is to promote standardized specifications in the field of automated driving. At the same time, however, this joint event is also intended to optimize and facilitate collaboration and common goals within the industry. The focus is always on globally applicable, innovative solutions in the field of standardization. At the same time, the OADF serves as a platform and meeting place to present and discuss the latest developments and achievements on the way to a connected world of autonomous cars. The Open AutoDrive Forum event is an opportunity to optimize future developments and connect various industry players. But that’s not all, as members and partners also like to take the opportunity here to discuss important trends and opportunities for collaboration. The online event in September was opened by Andras Csepinszky from NNG, the new OADF spokesperson and co-chair of SENSORIS. Further meetings of this kind are already planned for 2022.
Some of the highlights of the 16th Open Auto Drive Forum at a glance:
The first keynote, which was met with a lot of interest on the part of the participants, covered “Unsettled Issues on HD Mapping Technology for Autonomous Driving and ADAS” and was delivered by Thomas Bock, Engineering Manager at Porsche Digital in Paolo Alto. He shared interesting insights and findings from an SAE technical paper on map requirements for AD and ADAS. In particular, this presentation focused on the challenges of creating HD maps, including the economics and feasibility of scaling HD map creation globally, detecting changes in map content or updating a map, and validating map content to contribute to system safety. Based on his experience, Bock explained several times that standardization is an essential step to address these challenges in the future.
Furthermore, Dr. Matthias Ruether of Joanneum Research in Graz spoke about Ultra-HD mapping and the EU Project ESRIUM. Such maps in particularly high resolution can be stored in any format that supports this resolution. The cooperative EU research project ESRIUM on the other hand aims to increase road safety. An important contribution here is made by digital maps of road damage and wear, which are used in road maintenance planning and for route recommendations.
The fact that a lot is happening in the field of automated driving was also shown by the brief presentations of the following OADF speakers, who spoke about their latest developments in this area:
Martin Schleicher, the Chairman of the NDS Association spoke about use cases and design principles of the NDS.Live specification. However, he also talked about future NDS plans. Satoru Nakajo (University of Tokyo) talked about SIP-adus along with the results of the Field Operational Test (FOT) 2020, while Jean-Charles Pandazis from ERTICO reported on ADASIS v3.2, which has been released internally, as well as the planned ADASIS v3.3.
Nicco Hagedorn of ASAM presented the current OpenX roadmap and described ASAM OpenLabel and ASAM Open Operational Design Domains (ODD). András Csepinszky from NNG talked about SENSORIS and the collaboration with OADF. Matthias Unbehaun from TISA focused on the progress of TPEG3 development, while Christian Kleine from HERE Technologies talked about TN-ITS tools in development, the partnership with CEN/TC278, and the interface to NAPCORE projects.
In summary, it can be said that the OADF has meanwhile developed into a fixed and important meeting place for opinions in the industry so that it can be followed with interest which new developments can be discussed at the next forum.
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