Here you can find a summing up of the GCDC final in press. 

Op maandag 24 oktober zijn de iMobility awards uitgereikt. Het iMobility Forum reikte deze prijzen uit aan personen of teams die een bijzondere bijdrage leveren aan slimme en veilige oplossingen voor mobiliteitsvraagstukken. TNO deed goede zaken door met de Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) een iMobility award in de wacht te slepen.

Bastiaan Krosse neemt iMobility award in ontvangstTNO ontving de prijs binnen de categorie “Nationale/lokale Intelligente Transportsystemen”. Bastiaan Krosse, Senior Project Manager Mobiliteit bij TNO: “We zijn zeer blij en trots dat we met de eerste GCDC de iMobility award hebben gewonnen. Het bewijst dat we met de GCDC de vooruitgang versnellen met als belangrijk doel mensen en goederen op een verantwoorde manier in beweging te houden. Met de GCDC werken we, samen met bedrijven, overheden en kennisinstellingen, aan vernieuwende oplossingen om mobiliteit slimmer te organiseren en schoon, stil en veilig te maken. Het versnellen van innovatie, daar staan we voor als TNO.”

read more >>

In mid of May, the first Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) was held in Helmond, the Netherlands. The GCDC is an open competition for between research groups on the topic of cooperative, autonomous driving. This time, the teams had to develop a communicating vehicle controller that performs longitudinal control of the vehicle in a platooning setup. The vehicles are exchanging their positions, velocities and accelerations via wireless communication. The controller should keep a small distance to the vehicle ahead without falling below a given safety distance. Lateral control, i.e. steering, was done by a human safety driver.

read more >>

And the points of our jury go to...

The teams are judged based on two scenarios – being an urban and a highway scenario – using two types of criteria: the performance of a whole platoon with respect to platoon length, as well as the individual performance by means of the team’s ability to dampen out shockwaves. Both criteria represent the effective and safe use of the available road capacity. The teams have been judged using the roadside measurement equipment installed at the test site.

Team AnnieWay of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany wins first Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge

Ruud van Heugten, Noord-Brabant provincial executive for Mobility and Finance, joins team AnnieWay, winner of the GCDC 2011, in a toast.The first Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) on Sunday 15 May was won by the German team AnnieWay of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. During the Cooperative Driving Weekend, part of Automotive Week 2011, it had the best cooperative driving result in an exciting international challenge against ten other teams. “Both the partners involved – High Tech Automotive Campus, TNO, Province of Noord-Brabant, SRE and Helmond municipality – and the participating teams were very enthusiastic about how this GCDC went.

The GCDC demonstrates that cooperative driving technology works when it comes to reducing traffic jams and it generates good results in the area of cooperation as well as accelerates innovative solutions for better mobility. In brief, we are positive and that means we certainly intend to carry on,” says Nico Zornig, Mobility Business Line Manager at TNO.

read more >> 

One week before the challenge!

In the video you will get an impression about the teams and the preparation of the challenge.

read more >>  

“Cooperation for competition!”

GCDC Technology Workshop 2011, January 25th, 2011

From 19 – 21 January the first GCDC Technology Workshop 2011 was held in Helmond, The Netherlands.

About 30 participants from all 10 international participating teams made their way to TNO at the High Tech Automotive Campus. Their main goal? To get their wireless communication equipment and protocols up and running, and to test it with the other teams and implementation used by the GCDC organization. Furthermore, Jan Huissoon of the University of Waterloo in Canada attended the workshop as a possible participant to the GCDC.  Besides the communication, other aspects were also discussed such as, the status of the GCDC organization, rules and judging, RTK GPS, roadside infrastructure, insurance and legal issues.

You can find an impression, foto's and the presentations here.

UPDATED DOWNLOAD: legal issues  

Counting the numbers: international interest for GCDC 2011

After the opening of the registration period this spring for the first  GCDC in 2011, the counter for officially participating consortia is approaching the number 10. The registrations show a diverse set of vehicles, including Fiat, Volvo, Volkswagen, Audi, Mazda, Ford and two Smarts. On the more serious vehicle size: Scania brings a truck to the start and also Daf supports a team with a truck.

read more >>

Registration period extended

Although the registration closure date for the 2011 event is officially past, as mentioned above, there is still strong interest from different parties. The process of finding the right partners and forming the needed consortia seems to take more time than expected, especially because the event has been moved ahead to march. Different parties are still considering participation, but stated to need more time to point all elements in the same direction. To allow this and to provide every interested team time to realize their final ‘go’, the GCDC has decided to extend the registration period.

Read more about the registration procedure and participating the event.>>

GCDC 2011 succeeds in attracting leading car brands

During InterTraffic, the mobility expo that recently took place in the RAI Amsterdam, the registration process started for the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge 2011. At the stand of co-initiator High Tech Automotive Systems (HTAS), four teams have already registered for the GCDC 2011. The organization expects to start in March 2011 with about 10 teams.

For the organization of the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC), InterTraffic turned out to be a valuable expo with many visitors, excellent discussions and a good inflow of initial registrations. The GCDC organization spoke to interested teams from Europe, the Middle East, Japan and the US. 

read more about particitating teams an follow up>>

Challenging aspects of time-critical Cooperative Driving

A short overview of specific cooperative driving aspects that are explored by the GCDC in 2011.

These aspects can be categorized into four parts:

• deployment strategies
• robust fail-safe real-time control
• distributed real-time information structures
• wireless communication in real-time environments.

Read the full article and join the discussion >>

Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge

International teams competing to deliver the most effective cooperative vehicle-infrastructure system in predetermined traffic scenarios: that is the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC). An international and unique challenge in the field of cooperative driving. The GCDC aims to accelerate the implementation of these systems and contribute significantly to alleviate traffic problems worldwide.

Those bold enough to take up the challenge will have to negotiate their vehicles as efficiently as possible through a range of predetermined traffic scenarios. The extent to which the traffic flow is improved by this and the speed at which this improvement can be implemented will be uppermost in the judges' minds. The challenge is thus a unique tool for the rapid transfer of research findings to real-life driving conditions.

read more ...