Managed automated driving: a new way for safe and economic automation

Abstract

Automated driving as discussed today within the community uses a pure vehicle based automation. More advanced connected and cooperated AD use a light support of infrastructure but “the brain” is always installed in the vehicle. Some first demonstrations show that a support of the infrastructure might be useful. However, a radical shift to infrastructure based automation has not been proposed so far. Managed automated driving (MAD) follows exactly this radical approach for a new level of automation. It is characterized by two key features: a) 100% monitoring by infrastructure with road capturing units (RCUs) – “at each lamp post a sensor” and b) 100% control by infrastructure with edge computing/back-end – “vehicle as simple actuator only”. In this paper we introduce MAD and discuss technical, economical and legal aspects of the unique opportunity. As an application example for MAD we use the already highly innovative modular vehicle concept “U-Shift”.