Autonomous driving forging ahead in Luxembourg Moving towards a paradigm shift in mobility

Three questions for... Prof. Dr. Raphaël Frank, director of the 360Lab

How did the autonomous driving test go? Did new avenues of research open up as a result of the demonstration?

The purpose of the event was to show our partners and the general public the various 360Lab projects focusing on intelligent mobility and, in this particular case, autonomous driving. As such, it was mainly an event to showcase the progress of our research as opposed to a purely scientific test. The test went smoothly and there were no major problems.

And yes, new avenues of research have opened up. This test mainly demonstrated an engineering project, but there are many small pockets of research linked to the autonomous car that 360Lab PhD students are already working on.

One of these areas of research is the development of highly detailed mapping. It is like a version of Google Maps for autonomous vehicles, which provides extremely precise data on the environment. This technology will considerably reduce the costs of this type of vehicle because it will no longer be necessary to have sensors, which are often very expensive pieces of equipment. The aim is to have a lot of data about the environment already available in the car or that can be downloaded via a mobile network, such as 5G. The purpose of this research is to ensure that the mapping is always up to date as well as to make sure that the information on the map corresponds to the reality on the ground. These different approaches are being studied at 360Lab.

How can autonomous driving deliver a safer and more sustainable mobility ecosystem?

We work on the principle that robots, and therefore the autonomous car, will be much safer than a vehicle driven by a human.

Looking further into the future, when cars are fully autonomous, we will no longer need manual driving (or significantly less). As such, the number of cars on our roads may be reduced considerably. This also means that we will not necessarily have to buy or own a car. Instead, it would be a mobility-on-demand service: there will be vehicles located everywhere and when you need to travel from point A to point B, you would be able to call upon a whole range of mobility options. It would follow a similar model to Uber - we will have mobile apps to book a ride and these cars will pick us up and drive us autonomously to the destination of our choice. By using this approach, the aim is to use cars as much as possible and thus reduce the total number of cars on the roads. As a matter of fact, the majority of cars are just used for one hour a day and then sit idle for the rest of the day. Using this approach, we would be much more effective by embracing the idea of sustainability and safety based on robots.

Can autonomous mobility technologies be used in other areas of research? Do they have other applications in everyday life?

There is a huge potential for these applications. Much of the technology behind the autonomous car is perception-sensing technology: try to recognize what is around the car. I have already mentioned digital mapping, but this is only used for static objects, which do not move. But you also need sensors to detect moving objects around the car. For this, there are vision-based systems: for example, cameras which detect other cars and try to monitor them. These sensing technologies are already used in many artificial intelligence applications for image analysis. For example, if you enter a car park, there are now often cameras that will read the number plate and, when exiting the car park, the camera will automatically detect the number plate and open the barrier. And if you've already paid, you no longer need a ticket. That is one example, but there are thousands of others. Perception-sensing technology is already used in many fields.

All areas related to robotics, such as autonomous drones and the space industry already use very similar technologies.