@CITY initiative to research and test automated driving functions for urban traffic

The @CITY research initiative brings together 15 partners from the automotive industry, component supply industry, software development and universities. The two partner projects @CITY and @CITY-AF aim to develop concepts, technologies and prototype applications to enable automated driving in complex urban areas.

Automated vehicles will become part of everyday life in the near future "“ not only on clearly structured motorways and expressways, but also in urban areas. Yet urban traffic in particular poses huge challenges for the researchers and developers of the necessary technologies. The task is to master considerably more complex road layouts, processes and possible scenarios. In addition, towns and cities are places where many different road users interact in a relatively confined space.

To make automated urban driving convenient, safe and efficient, it is therefore necessary to optimally combine many different components "“ from highly precise map systems and sophisticated sensor technologies to the algorithm-based detection and interpretation of situations. That is the objective of the @CITY collaborative project, which was initiated at the end of 2017, and the @CITY-AF partner project, which launched on 1 July of this year and which is designed to convert the findings from @CITY into concrete automated driving functions.

The 15 partners will receive funding of around €20 million ($23.4 million) from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi).

The goal is to make urban traffic of the future as safe, convenient and efficient as possible for all road users. While the focus of @CITY (01.09.2017 "“ 31.08.2021) is on detecting environments and understanding situations, along with digital maps and localisation, the purpose of @CITY-AF (01.07.2018 "“ 30.06.2022) is to convert the findings from @CITY into concrete automated driving functions.

The total budget of the initiative is around €45 million ($52.7 million), some €20 million ($23.4 million) of which is from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi).

The project participants are automotive manufacturers Audi AG, Daimler AG, Man Truck & Bus AG, component suppliers Aptiv Services Deutschland GmbH, Continental Automotive GmbH, Continental Safety Engineering International GmbH, Continental Teves AG & Co. oHG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Valeo Schalter und Sensoren GmbH, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, 3D Mapping Solutions GmbH and research organisations German Aerospace Centre, Technical University of Chemnitz, Technical University of Darmstadt and Technical University of Munich. Other university and research institutes as well as small and medium-sized enterprises are also involved in the initiative as subcontractors.