To solve the issue that tunnels present to autonomous vehicle positioning, a ground-breaking trial of V2X technology has been successfully carried out in Norway.
Inside a 1.3-mile (2.2km) stretch of newly built road tunnel in the municipality of Bærum, Norway, AV technology company Cohda Wireless has implemented its V2X-Locate to demonstrate the efficacy of its vehicle positioning system.
The technology, which aims to solve the issue of GNSS and GPS system signal loss in locations such as urban canyons and underground parking lots, used four roadside units (RSUs) positioned at intervals inside the tunnel. This enabled the vehicle to use V2X to locate a vehicle moving through the tunnel with a high degree of accuracy.
“Being able to locate vehicles with a high degree of accuracy in a tunnel of these vast dimensions, without causing interference to other radio signals used in the tunnel, bodes well for the introduction of autonomous vehicles and buses,” said Prof. Paul Alexander, chief technical officer, Cohda Wireless.
The success of the trial means the technology paves the way for the roll-out of C-ITS as well as Cooperative Connected Automated and Automated Mobility (CCAM).
“C-ITS currently relies on good GPS reception under open sky, but this test proves that we can make it work in tunnels as well. This was a fairly short tunnel, well suited as a proof-of-concept, but we hope we’ll get the opportunity to implement this in the really long tunnels, like the E39 RogFast which will be 27km long, with complex exit ramps and two roundabouts in the middle,” said Bjørn Elnes, systems engineer at Aventi, a tunnel technology company that partnered on the project.
“In addition to increasing safety and convenience for drivers currently using the tunnels, it will also enable autonomous shuttles to traverse these tunnels.”