ReFreeDrive project activities update

Since the last update, ReFreeDrive project has attended several international events for disseminating the progress and the main outcomes of the project so far. Recently, on the 1st December, ReFreeDrive participated in H2020RTR Conference, the 4th European-wide conference dedicated to the presentation of results from road transport research in H2020 funded projects. Together with the other two EU projects from the GV-04 cluster (ModulED and DRIVEMODE), ReFreeDrive provided an insightful view of how the European R&D is allowing taking the lead in the electric powertrain field, benefiting the environment, the economy and the society overall.

Besides, we are glad to announce the celebration of the third webinar of the ReFreeDrive’s webinar series the next 16th December, 11:00AM CET. This time, three members of the Consortium will explain some interesting manufacturing facts for advanced induction motors: hairpin stator winding (Mario Vetuschi, Tecnomatic), die-cast copper rotor with zero porosity (David Schmitz, Breuckmann e-mobility) and fabricated copper rotor production process (Denise Willems, Aurubis). You can join us on the following registration link.

 

 

 

Cidaut Foundation and Telefonica subsidiary ElevenPaths sign an agreement to boost efforts around industrial cybersecurity.

Cidaut Foundation and Telefonica subsidiary ElevenPaths sign an agreement to boost efforts around industrial cybersecurity.

In a statement, Cidaut´s ITC-industry 4.0 unit and Telefonica Tech’s cybersecurity unit presented a new project, dubbed ARISTEO, on which they are working together. This collaboration is intended to catch cyber criminals operating in industrial environments aiming to generate intelligence about potential threats for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in Spain.

ARISTEO is a real industrial framework which allows the development of connected meta-honeynets; networks consisting of honeypots which run industrial control systems (ICSs) testbeds, thus allowing the collection of much more information on the attacks so attackers “fall into the trap” of thinking they are attacking a real company. These honeypots, classified as high-interaction honeypots, are based on real applications running in real systems. ARISTEO then entertains the attackers to obtain information about them, which is then used to alert customers, analyse security flaws and anticipate potential attacks.

“Examples of open innovation like this are the best way to develop cybersecurity projects, products and services locally, but whose scope is oriented to a global market and are possible because both companies carry innovation in our DNA”, said Jose Cascallana, director at the industrial cybersecurity centre C4IN, Telefonica. Cidaut foundation has provided the infrastructure to develop the pilot. The Industry 4.0 manager, Alvaro Garcia, stated that “the final product will be aimed at the proactive detection of threats and the generation of intelligence, differential elements in the world of cybersecurity, to help SMEs”.

In addition, the agreement between the two groups also establishes a collaboration framework for the development of more research and use cases in industrial cybersecurity, as well as to continue deepening in project ARISTEO, with the integration of the Cidaut demonstrator in the Telefonica demonstrators, of in such a way that both parties can develop, test and evaluate their own and third party tools. This entails holding joint demonstrations carried out in specialised forums and events, as well as allowing the exchange of information from systems exposed to attacks for the application of machine learning and analysis, based on the data obtained.

The companies consider the exchange of knowledge on the real state of industrial cybersecurity, with the SMEs vision of Cidaut, as a center of knowledge (R&D) with a multidisciplinary team that apply concurrent engineering techniques, including industrial processes, and being capable of arriving at the full industrialisation of the best solution, and of Telefonica, as a company that has a proposal for value oriented also to large companies and multinationals. This information will be shared with third parties since the objective is to create a value proposition oriented to the reality of the Spanish industry, satisfying its demand for cybersecurity solutions. Also, this global framework of collaboration between Cidaut and Telefonica is oriented towards future collaboration in both national and European projects.

Both institutions consider the agreement as one more step to achieve the recognition of Castilla y León as a specialized region in the field of cybersecurity.

 

First safe urban electric vehicles prototypes ready to be tested in Avangard Project

The aim of Avangard is to design a microfactory for the production of electric cars and bikes applying Industry 4.0 solutions and minimizing the footprint of both the production and use phase of the vehicles. After the first third of this three years project, the first prototypes of electric cars have been produced and the bicycles will come soon. Taking advantage of the modularity of the vehicle design, the prototypes correspond to different configurations: two standard four seat vehicles and two vans have been manufactured, in the case of the four seats vehicles one of them corresponds to the short length one, while the other is track extended. In the case of the vans the difference among them is the installation of photovoltaic panels in the external surface of one of them, which allows 20 additional kilometres range thanks to the solar irradiation.

The microfactory will need tenth the extension and the investment of a standard factory for vehicles’ production. To reach this ambitious target several innovations are applied that cover from the possibility to make the configuration and the order of the vehicle from an application in your smartphone to the implementation of revolutionary laser cutting and 3D printing solutions. The microfactory has been sized for the production of 50 vehicles a day in two shifts, and is fed by renewable energy in order to be energy independent.

Avangard is linked to Steel S4 EV project, where the design of the vehicles has been optimised to be easily manufactured and at the same time to be best in class at occupant protection. Three of the first prototypes will be tested by Cidaut in the ambit of Steel S4 EV project to validate the frontal and lateral crash behaviour of the vehicles.

Successful real time testing for artificial vision and dedicated short range communication

In the field of the CERO Project, Cidaut has performed real time on board tests for vulnerable road users’ protection and short range communication. In the case of vulnerable users’ protection the tests have consisted in detecting both pedestrians and cyclist in different traffic scenarios, like overtaking, crossing or appearing behind big vehicles front blind points. The solution obtained is based in low cost components and simplified software. In fact, the system consists of a monocular webcam with a single processor to evaluate the images registered by the camera. The big effort has been made in the optimisation of the system program and in the use of artificial intelligence to teach the system.

All the scenarios tested were successfully completed, the different vulnerable road users were detected in advance and attending to their relative position with the vehicle trajectory the driver was advised accordingly. An important output of these trials has been the time needed for the system to register the image, process it and decide if it is a vulnerable road user or not. This time is 0,11 seconds clearly lower than the average reaction time of a human, 1 second, or the reaction time of a driver in alert situation, 0,5 seconds, and with the additional advantage of no distractions or drowsiness.

In parallel, the dedicated short range communication system developed in the project has been tested in different scenarios, the most relevant ones have been: semaphore communication, work zone + traffic jam and personalised messages for different users. In the first case communication between vehicle and traffic light, when the vehicle is approaching the traffic light, it communicates to the traffic light its speed and position, according to the time to red or to green, the traffic light makes a recommendation to the vehicle about how to proceed, immediately, the message appears in the HMI developed for the project. In the second case, the vehicle is alerted 500m in advance about the cut of one of the lanes of the road due to road works, and in the case of traffic jam due to the work zone, the vehicle is informed by the rest of the vehicles about this situation, as in the previous case, the corresponding graphic messages appear in the HMI of the vehicle. The personalised messages is aimed to substitute the large and costly (about 40 thousand euro) variable message signals in the roads. In this case the infrastructure has several pieces of information available for the users, but the users will only receive the information useful for them. For the test two vehicles were running on the track, the first one was an electric vehicle, and the second one a dangerous goods vehicle. The first vehicle received information about how to reach the closest charging station, while the second one was informed about a mandatory deviation for dangerous goods transport. The short range communication demonstrated to have more than 800 meters range and at the same time to be the best ally of the large range communication to warranty a seamless connectivity for the future autonomous vehicle.

CIDAUT talks about hydrogen in the AVL DIGITAL TECH WEEK 2020

Last October, AVL organised a series of technical conferences in online format, which addressed the new challenges in the automotive industry and the technological solutions to meet them.

AVL Digital Tech Week 2020 sought to show the keys to give the answer to the mobility challenges of today and tomorrow. Four two-hour sessions were held, in which AVL presented the technological trends and a partner from the automotive industry offered its specific vision on the subject. All presentations were of a high technical content and ended with a round table of questions. It was a very interesting opportunity to understand the current and future challenges.

The third session was focused on “Hydrogen – Hydrogen Generation and its application in mobility” where CIDAUT participated with one of the presentations that took place. On this occasion the presentation was entitled “Hydrogen value chain and mobility applications: CIDAUT experience” and was focused on CIDAUT’s experience and capabilities along the hydrogen value chain and especially in mobility applications and developments required for the use of hydrogen.

The day also included the presentation of AVL technicians who spoke about “AVL Fuel Cell Technology – A pathway to zero emission transportation” and the National Hydrogen Centre participated in the final round table.