Introduction

The vision of the interACT project is to enable the safe integration of Automated Vehicles into mixed traffic environments by designing, implementing and evaluating solutions for safe, cooperative and expectation-conforming interaction of the Automated Vehicle with both its on-board user and other road users.

Click on the following categories to learn more about the key results of the interACT project  

The interACT project vision, objectives and technical approach

Overview on project results

interACT scenarios

Key Results

Human-human interaction in real traffic

An observation study was planned, designed and conducted in three countries: Athens (Greece), Leeds (UK) and Munich (Germany). To cover all of the four interACT scenarios, two locations per country – a busy intersection and a shared space scenario – were chosen as observation sites.

Intention recognition

Interacting with other traffic participants in urban environments is an elaborated task of the Automated Vehicle that requires holistic planning and timely communication.

Planning the automation – the Cooperation and Communication Unit

The Cooperation and Communication Unit (CCPU) is the Automated Vehicle (AV) intelligent core: taking into account the kinematics, the gestures and the anticipated behaviour of all traffic participants (TPs), the CCPU develops an expectation-conforming, safe plan for the future motion of the Automated Vehicle.

HMI design and component development

As Automated Vehicles (AV) are likely to be deployed in mixed traffic, they need to interact safely and efficiently with other Human Road Users (HRU), including manually driven vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. To ensure clear, learnable and cooperative interaction between the Automated Vehicle and others, as well as a smooth flow of all traffic, it is essential that there is good means of communication between all actors.

Demonstrator integration

The main activity was the integration of all components in the two demonstrator cars, including the technical testing and the validation of the sub-components, modules and systems, in order to verify that their functionality is according to the requirements defined.

Evaluation Results

A multi-method approach was taken for this evaluation, as different methods have been shown to have different strengths and weaknesses. The demonstrator vehicles were evaluated using a mixture of test-track and real-world studies. These were complemented with pedestrian and driving simulator tests which allowed the evaluation of the eHMI and iHMI using a number of different scenarios.

Impact

Impact of the project results