Automated Driving 2024

Author: Christiane Köllner

News from the 9th International ATZ Conference

Automated Driving 2024
19-03-2024 – 20-03-2024 – Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Scaling Automated Driving for the Mass Market

How can automated driving be implemented on a broad scale? For Mobileye CTO Shai Shalev-Shwartz, five "multi-problems" need to be solved, among other things, as he explains at the ATZlive conference "Automated Driving 2024".

In order for automated vehicle technology to become widespread on the mass market, a complex strategy is required that has to deal with both technological and regulatory obstacles. One question that arises: How can we develop a meaningful, scalable and affordable "eyes-off" system? Professor Shai Shalev-Shwartz, CTO at Mobileye, will provide an answer to this question in his keynote speech "Navigating the Path to Mass Market Autonomous Mobility" at the 9th International ATZ Conference "Automated Driving 2024" in Frankfurt am Main, which is being held together with cooperation partner Continental. Two things are required for autonomous systems to penetrate the mass market: firstly, safety KPIs that must ensure accuracy, the avoidance of misjudgements and the prevention of system-related and reproducible errors. Secondly, usefulness in terms of availability, scalability and affordability.

According to Shalev-Shwartz, redundancy (strong subsystems) and the sensible use of modern AI tools should be mentioned in order to achieve these goals in terms of development methodology. In particular, the five "multi-problems", as Shalev-Shwartz calls them, must be solved in order to optimally implement end-to-end perception. These are: "multi-camera" (combined camera information), "multi-frame" (information from different time stamps), "multi-objects" (output of all objects with spatio-temporal consistency), "multi-scale" (efficient handling of near and far objects) and "multi-lanes" (predictions, intentions; lane assignment of objects to predict possible future behaviors, setting priorities). As far as regulation is concerned, the biggest hurdles would be to define an acceptable safety threshold and to introduce the validation procedures for this definition.

Sustainable Urban Mobility 

In his keynote speech "Sustainable Urban Mobility Frankfurt (SUMP): Opportunities and Risks of Autonomous Vehicles", Heiko Nickel, Head of Strategic Transport Planning at the City of Frankfurt am Main, looked at automated driving from the perspective of strategic transport planning. "We have to think in terms of energy and space efficiency when it comes to automated driving," said Nickel. According to the traffic planner, autonomous cars no longer work in the city after a certain point. If private cars were only replaced by autonomous cars with a similarly high occupancy rate or if road users were led away from more area-efficient means of transport, this would not solve the traffic problems. He expects automated driving to provide "small" solutions, such as an automated and digitized "hands-off" subway system. In order to solve the city of Frankfurt's traffic problems, a "Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan" (SUMP for short) is being pursued. This is a planning approach aimed at the sustainable, future-oriented development of urban and regional mobility.

How Autonomous Truck Systems Are Becoming a Reality

The main topics of the 9th International ATZ Conference "Automated Driving" with over 100 conference participants are technology stacks, security, processes and development methodology. The keynote speeches on the second day of the event by Ahmed Irathni, Continental, and Dr. Henning von Watzdorf, Holon, will focus on how autonomous truck systems can be put on the road and how automated driving can serve as an enabler for new mobility concepts.

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