interACT newsletter N5 | October 2020

Editorial

Welcome to the final interACT newsletter issue!
On the 30th of September 2020 the project completed its lifecycle after 41 months of research. A journey that started on May 1st, 2017 has ended with great research achievements attained by our consortium. In this issue, you can find all the material and videos of the interACT Virtual Final Event as well as links where project deliverables, publications and promotional materials are available for reading. In addition, a special focus has been placed on presenting the interACT Key Results. All the results of the project are the dedicated work of engaged people, the interACT partners! Thus, you can read their reflections on the project and their visions for the future of automated vehicles in mixed traffic at the end of this newsletter.

Enjoy reading and a warm thank you for your interest in the project from all of us, the interACT project team!

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interACT Virtual Final Event

As the interACT project reached its conclusion, the consortium organized a two-day online event on the 18th and 19th of June 2020 in order to present its produced results after more than 3 years of research. A dedicated section at project's website has been created where you can find:

Day I & Day II video presentations
(webinars)

Agenda & Speakers' Bios

All presentations in PowerPoint format

Find out more

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Project Deliverables

Don't forget to come by and check all the publicly available interACT deliverables. Available here.

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YouTube Channel

Project's videos all included in one channel! Watch them here.

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Publications

The published results of the interACT research work available here.

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Media Pack

Leaflets, Posters, Brochure.. and more interACT promotional material.

interACT Key Results

View the Key Results of the interACT project

Human-human interaction in real traffic

An observation study was planned, designed and conducted in three countries: Athens.. (»»)

Intention recognition

Interacting with other traffic participants in urban environments is an elaborated task of the Automated Vehicle that requires holistic planning and timely.. (»»)

Planning the automation – the Cooperation and Communication Unit

The Cooperation and Communication Unit (CCPU) is the Automated Vehicle (AV) intelligent core: taking into account the kinematics, the gestures.. (»»)

HMI design and component development

As Automated Vehicles (AV) are likely to be deployed in mixed traffic, they need to interact safely and efficiently with other Human Road Users (HRU), including manually driven vehicles, cyclists.. (»»)

Demonstrator integration

The main activity was the integration of all components in the two demonstrator cars, including the technical testing and the validation of the sub-components.. (»»)

Evaluation Methodology and Results

A multi-method approach was taken for this evaluation, as different methods have been shown to have different strengths.. (»»)

QUOTES
by interACT partners

Thanks to the dedicated and successful teamwork by everyone involved in the consortium the journey that the interACT project started 41 months ago ends with great research achievements in the field of Automated Vehicles. We have asked partners to drop us a line about their feelings and their vision. Here's what they said..

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR)

Anna Schieben

Over the last three years, I have enjoyed leading the interdisciplinary interACT team of excellent researchers and learning more and more about the interaction between people and automated vehicles. I firmly believe that we have made significant progress in the different domains of the interACT project to integrate automated vehicles safely in traffic. Thank you very much for your support and interest in our project.

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR)

Marc Wilbrink

The work performed in interACT sets the basis for future research regarding the integration of automated vehicles safely in real traffic. Working together with experts from all over Europe in this pioneer project created a special project spirit and was an inspiring experience.

Institute Of Communication And Computer Systems (ICCS)

Villy Portouli

I was really excited to work in this pioneer project that set the basis for a better understanding of driving and traffic behaviour. Apart from its highly innovative technological outcomes, the project provided an insight on the extent and depth of research needed to achieve the positive impacts expected by driving automation systems.

Institute Of Communication And Computer Systems (ICCS)

Giorgos Drainakis

DeaIing with the technical challenges of the project was a hard - yet exciting task. I am glad I worked alongside experienced colleagues from around Europe and shared our knowledge towards that objective. I hope I will be able to “drive” an AV on the road soon!

Hella KGaA Hueck & Co (HELLA)

Marc Kaup

It was an exciting experience to be part of this interdisciplinary interACT team. The project changed my point of view on Automated Driving and it sensitized myself and others that new requirements will influence our work on HMI and Vehicle Lighting.

University of Leeds (LEEDS)

Natasha Merat

This project was very enjoyable, and the results are very important for ensuring we understand the implications of adding automated vehicles to a mixed traffic environment, which will include pedestrians, cyclists and drivers of conventional vehicles. We have only scratched the surface in this area, however, and much more needs to be understood about how these different road users interact with each other in tomorrow’s urban settings, work which I hope we can continue as part of the newly funded HiDrive project. One of the most amazing aspects of the project for me was our collaboration with students from many other European institutions, outside the main consortium partners, which has led to a greater understanding of the area, due to the valuable contribution of expertise from a wide range of disciplines.

University of Leeds (LEEDS)

Yee Mun Lee

It was a great experience being the leader of WP6 and working together with all partners from different disciplines within interACT. We have learned so much throughout the project. Not only from the knowledge standpoint about the research topic, but also the different methods and evaluation criteria that can be used for investigation while studying interactions. Although we have learned a lot, but we also realised that there are so much more that we do not know and will continue the great work in HiDrive.

University of Leeds (LEEDS)

Ruth Madigan

For me, it was a joy to work as part of the interACT team. I’ve come away from the project with greater understanding of the importance of using multiple complementary methods to gain an holistic overview of how pedestrians might interact with AVs. The methods we have developed within the project can now be used to help us evaluate how AV interactions might differ across a variety of road infrastructures and environments.

Technical University of Munich (TUM)

Andre Dietrich

interACT has been an invaluable experience for me. Studying the interaction between humans and automated vehicles, we were presented with numerous challenges in regards to research questions, metrics and methodologies, which we successfully resolved thanks to the great teamwork and communication efforts of all partners. I feel that interACT made a valuable contribution towards the safe introduction of AVs on urban roads and am excited about the future of urban mobility.

Technical University of Munich (TUM)

Matthias Althoff

We have made huge progress towards safety for pedestrians and bicyclists in future traffic thanks to interACT. Our newly developed software provably ensures that future vehicles will not cause accidents with vulnerable road users.

Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft (BMW)

Florian Weber

I enjoyed being part of this project as joining interdisciplinary forces in research and industry helped to shape a deepened understanding of the different perspectives on automated driving and led to the best possible outcome. Taking a complete user centered design approach from extensive behavioral observations through iterative design of interaction patterns and technical solutions up to field experiments with the final prototypes on this large scale of project stands for a new level of user centeredness that will inspire future research and development on automated driving.

Robert Bosch GmbH (BOSCH)

Johannes Rünz

It was a great experience to be part of this interdisciplinary team in the interACT project. We developed new and promises approaches in pedestrian intention recognition. The project helped us on the way to urban automated driving. Special thanks go to the partners and coordinators for the good cooperation.

Centro Ricerche Fiat SCpA (CRF)

Fabio Tango

In order to guarantee that Automated Vehicles (AVs) are well-accepted from a large part of society (so actually bringing the expected benefits) it is necessary their safe and conforming integration into mixed traffic environments, including both its on-board user and other road users. This was exactly the top-level objective of the interACT project, which constituted a great experience for me: I enjoyed a lot working with this multidisciplinary and international team! People are prone to accept AVs presence, but only if they behave as expected. Therefore, as future research activities, more studies should be developed, to understand interactions in more complex scenarios and across different situations, as well as to investigate long-term effects and behavioral adaptation. Of course, the AVs should perceive these "complex scenarios", in order to be sure that all surrounding traffic participants are detected, especially in close proximity. From the technical perspective, this requires a big effort in the development of the perception part and, moreover, AV should be self-aware of its limits: if a reliable detection is not possible, this should be communicated immediately to the on-board user. I hope we can continue to work on these topics as part of the newly funded Hi-Drive project.

interACT Project Partners

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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 723395

This newsletter reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use may be made of the information contained therein