The transport sector generates up to 8 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year, of which almost 75% come from road transport. There are currently around 1 billion private vehicles in use. This number is expected to increase to 2.4 billion by 2050.
Therefore, new sustainable technologies and solutions are urgently needed. Optimizing the public transportation used today can and will help lower these previously mentioned numbers and open up the possibility of choosing smarter and more sustainable ways to commute. Currently, public transportation often does not effectively cover the last mile, leading commuters to prefer personal vehicles.
One solution for said last mile is Auve Tech's Level 4 autonomous shuttles.
Auve Tech is an Estonia-based company specializing in the design and manufacture of autonomous transportation systems. Their comprehensive service includes building the shuttles, pre-mapping the area, setting up the fleet, and monitoring and servicing the vehicles. With its routers, NetModule provides the needed connectivity between the vehicles and the cloud.
One platform, many advantages
Auve Tech's autonomous shuttles are poised to transform public transportation systems today, as they have the necessary road certification and can be easily integrated into existing transportation infrastructures. They facilitate last-mile transportation by covering areas that are not part of the public infrastructure or where smaller vehicles are needed for shorter distances - such as on narrow streets or in pedestrian zones. The goal here is to make inner-city areas greener and cleaner by reducing traffic from private vehicles, which can also reduce parking spaces.
With this solution, it is also possible to use the setup of the shuttles as a platform for other applications such as waste disposal or service vehicles for public utilities. The advantage for the operator is, that he only must look after and operate one platform - all vehicles work according to the same principle.
The shuttles used for passenger transport can accommodate up to 8 passengers and travel at low speeds of up to 25 km/h. All shuttles are equipped with LiDARs, cameras and GPS to get an overview of the surroundings, localize themselves on the predefined route and identify various objects or obstacles during the journey (pedestrians, bicycles, static objects, etc.). To help in certain situations, the option to manually take control remains. This allows a teleoperator to override a vehicle in real time from a central control room in emergency situations.
Currently, the shuttles can run for up to 8 hours on one battery charge. To offer further resource-saving solutions, Auve Tech has two prototypes in development: hydrogen-powered shuttles (in collaboration with the University of Tartu) and the use of super capacitors as energy storage (in collaboration with Skeleton Technologies).
Challenge: Connectivity
Autonomous driving requires a telematics or communication unit that meets the requirements of the road traffic application and has the necessary approvals for operation. Approval is of great importance, especially in road traffic, as the components installed in the vehicle must comply with legal regulations.
To ensure a secure and stable connection of the autonomous vehicles to the control software, redundant connectivity is necessary. Multiple LTE connections running simultaneously - with different SIM cards for safety - are advantageous to ensure permanent communication from the vehicle to the central cloud control. In addition to the existing active connections, the telematics unit must be able to provide further, non-active connections as a reserve. Thus, the active modems have another backup in case of failure.
Regardless of the complexity of the running applications, it is important that the telematics unit is easy and safe to configure. During operation, the responsible persons must be able to access it over the air (OTA) to perform services. The NetModule Router software allows access/update of different applications without compromising central application components of the telematics unit.
Data processing in the autonomous vehicle is highly sensitive in terms of vehicle-specific information. To this end, the vehicle and the cloud control software are in constant exchange. These data streams must not be interrupted, and the transmitted information must be protected against unauthorized access. If additional services are used, such as WLAN for passengers, ticketing systems, information on vehicle loading, etc., this data must be transmitted separately from the driving and vehicle data.
Solution
Auve Tech has installed NetModule NB2800 series routers in its vehicles. With two up to four LTE modems running simultaneously, they provide end-to-end communication from the vehicle to the central cloud controller.
By using multiple LTE connections, common telecommunications services can be used in parallel on different channels with just a few configuration steps. The user data is transmitted fully encrypted with VPN technology. With two additional SIM cards as backup, the connections are thus protected 8-fold. The routers of NetModule comply with UNECE-R10 (E-Mark) and UNECE-R118 regulations and are therefore ideally suited for use in road traffic.
Conclusion
In both Estonia and Greece, the first Auve Tech buses are driving autonomously and teleoperation-controlled on public roads. A total of 15 buses are in operation so far.
Currently, all vehicles operate without latency problems on the existing LTE or LTE-Advanced network of the local providers. Initial tests with 5G have shown that the even lower latency times therein have no more positive effect on the operation of the vehicles or the data transmission of the application. Accordingly, 5G will certainly not be used until the next generation. However, the most important finding here is that an automatic fallback to LTE/LTE Advanced will not show any negative effects then.
Autonomous vehicles will increasingly play a major role in road traffic. The new legislation in Germany clearly demonstrates this.
The platform strategy of Auve Tech and NetModule proves that such solutions offer enormous business potential for both partners in addition to personnel cost savings.
Auve Tech and NetModule will present their solution for autonomous driving at the ITS World Congress from October 11 - 15, 2021 in Hamburg. We look forward to welcoming you as a guest on site or to convince you in advance with a live demo.