Aligned with its mission and vision of putting safety in the forefront of mobility solutions, Cidaut is participating together with CTAG, ITENE and i2cat, in a strategic collaborative project among reference Spanish research centers to create innovative solutions related to safety. This strategic network is called INTEGRA.
The projects aims at developing digital instruments applicable to assisted and automated driving solutions to increase the safety through anti-crash sensors and intelligent communication networks. The cooperation between the four research centers involved is targeting the reinforcement of their capabilities to develop innovative technologies to foster the implementation of connected and automated mobility solutions in complex environments, with a first focus on urban scenarios.
The network has fixed four technologic challenges, each of one leaded by one of the research centers integrating the project. Cidaut is in charge of the development of new safety systems integrated to the automated driving capabilities to adaptively mitigating the damage on the occupants. CTAG is responsible of creating new automated functions, enhancing the connectivity and developing anti-collision systems. I2cat is in charge of the development of advanced tools for the complex connected environments and ITENE leads the creation of safety solutions for automated last mile applications.
INTEGRA network is funded by the Spanish Government through the Ministerio e Ciencia e Investigación and CDTI, EXP 00140188/CER-2021 1031.
Urban mobility is smoothly changing, the electric vehicles are slowly but firmly conquering their natural environment. The cities are the places were the highest percentage of the population is concentrated, for this reason it is very important to improve the quality of the air, highly related to the health. At the same time the cities are the places where the travelling distances are shorter, lower to 30km as an average daily. And finally, the cities are the places with a higher number of transport means coexist.
The scenario that has been described involves a high interaction between different transport modes from walking to public transport going through monocycles, scooter, bicycles, motorbikes and four wheelers. The aim of Multi-Moby project, funded by the European Commission in the H2020 Programme, is focused on the four wheelers, taking as a base a high performance low consumption urban electric vehicle, Cidaut is leading the activities to ensure the safety of all the actors involved in the urban mobility. To get this ambitious target the safety is tackled from an integral point of view, including active and passive aspects.
From the active point of view the vehicle is equipped with advanced driving assistance systems that allow the identification of the more vulnerable users of the road and to take autonomous decisions in order to about accidents.
From the passive point of view, an optimized structure and ad-hoc developed restrain system protect the occupants in the event of a lateral, frontal or rear crash. But also, in the case that the active safety systems cannot avoid the accident against a vulnerable road user, the structure of the vehicle has been designed to minimize the damage.
In the frame of Multi-Moby European Project, which aims at developing of technology for safe, efficient and affordable urban electric vehicle, Cidaut is responsible of the integral safety of the vehicle’s occupant but also of the rest of the vulnerable road users.
Multi-Moby is the last, by now, of a large row of projects that were born from the idea of developing environmental friendly, sustainable vehicles considering circular economy concepts, and will finish with the development of a digitalized micro-factory for the assembly of the final solution. In this project the vehicle safety is being improved that’s to the introduction of automated driving solutions that will contribute to increase the integral safety of occupants and the rest of road users.
Cidaut is in charge of the structural design, the development of the restraint system and the implementation of innovative solutions for vulnerable road users’ protection, all of them supported by the automated driving capabilities of the vehicle. The vehicle will be equipped with artificial intelligence to look out the environment and make decisions to avoid or mitigate the possible accident. In the worst case, if the accident happens, Cidaut’s solutions will minimize its consequences on both, the occupant and the vulnerable road users.
Acknowledgment
The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union (EU) project MULTI-MOBY (GA #101006953).
HIPEBA (“High Performance Steel for Safer and more Competitive Safety Barriers”) is a EU-funded project that focuses on the development of safer and more competitive road restraint systems by using high-performance steels.HIPEBA is funded under the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) framework programme. The Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) provides funding for high-quality research projects that support the competitiveness of the European Coal and Steel industries.
Objectives
Map current and future performance-related requirements for safety barriers.
Determine how steels with enhanced material characteristics can contribute to improve the performance of safety barriers in all stages of their life cycle.
Deliver criteria for the technical implementation of high-performance steels into road safety barriers.
Demonstrate that introducing high-performance steels in safety barriers can make products more competitive and yield economic revenues for EU’s industry and society, compensating the initial purchase cost.
Develop and test pilot designs that demonstrate the benefits of high-performance steels.
Ensure that road safety barriers manufactured with high-performance steel meet the required certification and approval processes.
Why?
The European Union, a world leader in the steel industry, is facing increasingly fierce competition from non-EU producers. Advanced research is essential for European industry to remain competitive, as well as a deeper understanding of the paramount importance of high-performance steel within the everyday needs of the road safety sector.
With the purpose of supporting this leadership, HIPEBA is a ground-breaking initiative relevant to the maintenance and new construction of EU road infrastructures, as the latest and safest technology must become available to European road users.
Who?
The HIPEBA consortium has gathered a group of specialist organisations from industry, academia and research securing a successful implementation and deployment of its planned activities.
News & Recent Events
The third HIPEBA consortium meeting takes place in CIDAUT facilities (Spain) on 13 October 2015
All partners of the HIPEBA project gathered in Valladolid (Spain) to review the work done during the last year -mostly under Work Package 1- and to discuss the work plan for the next months. In particular, the consortium agreed on the next steps to successfully complete the tasks under Work Package 2 (“Material Properties and processes analysis“) by the end of the year. In addition, a tele-conference was set up for 28 October in order to schedule the imminent characterization of steels tests. The results of these tests will provide a wide knowledge about the high performance steels which would be used in the barrier systems.
HIPEBA meeting hold 13 October 2015 Cidaut facilities.
The HIPEBA project was invited to the TRA2016 poster session
The European Commission has officially invited HIPEBA (“High Performance Steel for Safer and more Competitive Safety Barriers”) to be present during the 6th Transport Research Arena (TRA2016) poster session. The Smart Transportation Alliance (STA), leader of the project’s communication and dissemination efforts, will be present at the TRA2016, the most important transport research event in Europe, which will take place in Warsaw (Poland), from 18 to 21 April 2016.
CIDAUT together with other vehicle, infrastructure and behavioural experts attended last SafetyCube Meeting on November 10th 2015, gathered in Gothenburg to receive an in-depth training for coding road safety literature. The coding exercise is the basis for an evidence-based, quantified overview of risk factors in road traffic as well as the effectiveness of countermeasures. This will be one of the main building blocks of the Decision Support System, SafetyCube’s main outcome.
The training, supported by extensive written guidelines, focused on the many research designs that are used in road safety studies, their potential biases and, hence, the conclusions that can be drawn or cannot be drawn from a study. Within SafetyCube’s methodology workpackage an interactive excel-based coding template had been developed which ensures a uniform way of coding different studies in different areas of interest. That way it will be possible to perform overall quantitative analyses over studies that are otherwise hardly comparable. First results are planned to become available late autumn 2016.
SafetyCube (Safety CaUsation, Benefits and Efficiency) is a research project funded by the European Commission under the Horizons 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, in the domain of Road Safety. The project started on May 1st, 2015 and will run for a period of three years.
The primary objective of the SafetyCube project is to develop an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS) that will enable policy-makers and stakeholders to select and implement the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities in Europe and worldwide.
