Author: Markus Junker

On May 9, 2023, the 19th Open Auto Drive Forum event was held at HERE in Chicago, USA. Originally planned as an onsite-only event, it was eventually also possible to participate online. The event was opened by Jeff Raimo, Sr Director Product, at HERE. He welcomed to Chicago and introduced UniMap, HERE’s mapping technology that creates fresher and more accurate maps. Following good tradition, Andras Csepinszky of NNG, spokesperson for OADF and co-chair of SENSORIS, gave an introduction to OADF for those attending for the first time. He then led through the agenda and moderated the sessions, assisted by Stephanie Chaufton (TISA), who looped in the online participants and managed the polls and presentations.

By popular demand, NDS technical coordinator Fabian Klebert was invited to the meeting to explain the role of serialization in the various standards and why the NDS chose zserio rather than Protobuf, which is used in many other standards. In his presentation, he compared the two approaches in detail in terms of features, code quality, data size, and encoding/decoding speed. In summary, NDS chose zserio over Protobuf because it is smaller, faster, allows for more advanced schemas, and supports the development of ASIL-compliant solutions.

The second invited talk was given by Takeshi Doihara, ISO/TC204/WG3 Expert and ISO/TC211/JWG11 Co-Convenor for the Geographic Data Files (GDF) standard. He first explained the scope of ISO/TC204 (Intelligent Transportation Systems) and TC211 (Geographic Information/Geomatics) and the importance of these standards for GDF development. Another focus of his presentation was the difference between GDF5.1-1 (GDF 5.0) and GDF 5.1-2 and the feature representation in GDF5.1. Furthermore, he reported on the harmonization between GDF and ISO 191xx and the planned revisions of GDF.

As in all OADF events, the OADF member organizations and ASAM reported on their recent activities:

• Jean-Charles Pandazis, ADASIS Coordinator and from ERTICO, reported that ADASIS v3 – 3.0.0. has just been released internally. It includes new profiles for speed limits and a request-and-response mechanism. ADASIS is also preparing a White Paper to be released in the coming months.
• Benjamin Engel, CTO at ASAM, gave an overview of the OpenX standards, with particular focus on the Offroad Concept Project, the ASAM Text Specification, and the ASAM OpenODD.
• Martin Schleicher, NDS Chair and Elektrobit representative to NDS, gave an overview of recent advances in NDS.Live, which is now available for evaluation purposes also for non-NDS members and explained how NDS.Live can now be used to distribute map data in various scenarios.
• Andras Csepinszky, Co-Chair of SENSORIS and Advanced Automotive Technology Director of NNG, reported on the latest SENSORIS version 1.6 and the planning for SENSORIS 2.0.
• Satoru Nakajo, SIP-adus founding member from the University of Tokyo, reported on the results of the SIP-adus program in Japan, which ended in March 2023, and on planned follow-up activities.
• Matthias Unbehaun, TISA Executive Director, provided information on TPEG2 and the requirements and ongoing discussions of the follow-up version related to automated driving.
• Christian Kleine, TN-ITS President and from HERE, introduced TN-ITS and reported on progress towards alignment with DATEX II and TN-ITS.

At the end of the event, Steffen Kuhn from Elektrobit organized a workshop on reliable maps for automated driving for the on-site participants. His teaser presentation on this topic sparked a lively discussion about Reliable Map Attributes (RMAs) and RMA deviation types. As a result of the discussion, the OADF will work out more detailed and more concrete recommendations for making maps highly reliable and align with other ISO working groups on the definition of map data quality attributes.

OADF looks forward to celebrating its 20th meeting with the next event. The date and venue will be announced soon on the OADF website.

The 18^th Open Auto Drive Forum event on November 22, 2022, was attended by more than 100 online participants. Andras Csepinszky of NNG, the OADF spokesperson and co-chair of SENSORIS, warmly welcomed the attendees and recalled the history and goals of OADF. He also gave an overview of recent OADF activities related to reliable maps and the OADF ecosystem.

Steffen Kuhn from Elektrobit introduced to ISO/AWI TS 5083 ‘Road vehicles – Safety for automated driving systems’, which will include a chapter on the use of HD maps in automated driving systems. This chapter will also provide the definition of reliable map attributes (RMAs), their deviation types, and mitigation of risks arising from RMA deviations.

Aria Etemad from Volkswagen gave an overview of the EU projects L3Pilot and its successor project Hi-Drive, of which he is the coordinator. L3Pilot aimed to test congestion, highways, parking, and urban applications. The Hi-Drive project began in 2021 and is scheduled to last 4 years.  It focuses on Automated Driving robustness and reliability, extended and defragmented Operational Design Domains (ODDs), and interoperability between countries and brands.

Trond Hovland of ITS Norway introduced ISO JWG 11 as a joint working group of ISO/TC 204 WG3 ‘ITS Geographic Data’ and ISO TC 211 ‘Geographic information/Geomatics’ and reported on the planning of a new version 6.0 of the Geographic Data Files (GDF).

In addition, the OADF member organization provided information on their recent activities in automated driving:

• Jean-Charles Pandazis, ADASIS Coordinator and of ERTICO, reported on the release of ADASIS v3.2, the planning for v3.3, which will integrate auxiliary providers, and the planning for v3.4, which will focus on a low-level protocol.
• Benjamin Engel, CTO at ASAM, gave an overview of the OpenX standards, with particular emphasis on the role and definition of an Operational Design Domain as targeted by OpenODD.
• Martin Schleicher, NDS Chairman and Elektrobit’s representative at NDS, gave an overview of recent advances in NDS.Live and reference implementations using OpenAPI and AUTOSAR SOME/IP.
• András Csepinszky, SENSORIS Co-Chairman and from NNG, reported on the latest SENSORIS version 1.6 and the planning for SENSORIS 2.0.
• Satoru Nakajo, SIP-adus founding member of the University of Tokyo, reported on the SIP-adus workshop held October 11-13, on SIP-adus’ collaboration with ADASIS in the field Operational Test, and on the development of DMP.
• Matthias Unbehaun, TISA Executive Director, provided information on the progress of the TPEG3 development and the automated driving use cases guiding the development.
• Christian Kleine, TN-ITS President and of HERE, reported on the market demand for digital maps and improvements in the data chain between Road Authorities as a trusted source and service provider.

The 17^th Open Auto Drive Forum event on May 17, 2022, was the first OADF event since 2019 where participants met on-site. The on-site portion took place in Frankfurt, Germany, where approximately 30 participants gathered. Another 130 people attended the meeting remotely.

The OADF speaker and co-chair of SENSORIS, Andras Csepinszky of NNG, warmly welcomed participants to the hybrid meeting and introduced the history and goals of the OADF forum and events.

Several experts from government, industry and academia were invited for the 17^th OADF. Suku Phull from the Department for Transport UK reported on the situation in the UK and presented cross-border cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) as a promising approach to improve road safety and congestion statistics. Torsten Geissler from the Federal Highway Research Institute in Germany (BASt) reported on the Connected Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) partnership. This major program aims, among other things, at safe and trustworthy interaction between road users, vehicles, infrastructure and services, as well as improved synergies between public and private investment plans to further develop vehicle and infrastructure technologies. Chris Thibodeau, CEO of Ushr, shared the mission of the Digital Map Platform (DMP) to provide an HD data platform that maps the world. He gave an overview of DMP and its shareholders and explained the great potential of HD map applications. Siddartha Khastgir, Head of Verification & Validation, Intelligent Vehicles at WMG/ University of Warwick, presented Operation Design Domains (ODD) for automated driving systems. He made several recommendations on things to consider when working on an ODD, such as maintaining consistency between map standards and ODD attributes.

Following the tradition, the various standardization organizations briefly presented their organizations and provided information on their recent activities in automated driving:

• Jean-Charles Pandazis of ERTICO reported on ADASIS v3.2, which was released internally, and on the planning of ADASIS v3.3, which will include a low-level protocol and integration of auxiliary providers. ADASIS is a success story celebrating its 20^th Anniversary at next GA on 28-29 June in Brussels.
• Benjamin Engel of ASAM reported on the challenges in developing OpenDRIVE to provide realistic representations of real-world data at a larger scale and how these are being addressed.
• Martin Schleicher, Elektrobit’s representative to NDS, gave an overview of recent progress on NDS.Live, which is now open for evaluation.
• András Csepinszky of NNG reported on the achievements of SENSORIS and on collaboration with related activities such as OADF.
• Satoru Nakajo from the University of Tokyo reported on SIP-adus with a focus in the Field Operational Test (FOT) 2021, which is now completed, and the use of ADASIS in the FOT.
• Matthias Unbehaun from TISA provided information on the progress of TPEG3 development and AD use cases guiding the development.

At the end of the day, the attendees were invited to on-site workshops on map safety security and the OADF ecosystem. Teaser presentations by Steffen Kuhn of Elektrobit, Andras Csepinszky and Matthias Unbehaun led to lively discussions and a fruitful exchange of information between the participants.

The OADF is now in its seventh year and continues to attract great interest. A second OADF event in 2022 is already planned, the date and format of which will be announced in due course.

The 16^th Open Auto Drive Forum event on September 16, 2021 attracted up to 170 participants from the automotive sector to discuss advances in standardization related to automated and autonomous driving.

Andras Csepinszky from NNG, the new OADF speaker and co-chair of SENSORIS, opened the meeting and introduced the event and its background. Two keynote presentations attracted great interest from the audience and were the subject of numerous questions to the experts.

Matthias Ruether from Joanneum Research in Graz, Austria, reported on their efforts to produce maps with very high resolution (“Ultra HD maps”). Such maps can be stored in any format supporting the resolution. He explained the motivation, production process and application areas. A second topic of his presentation was the cooperative EU research project ESRIUM, which contributes to road safety by providing a digital map of road damage and wear. Such maps are used for road maintenance planning and route recommendations.

Thomas Bock from Porsche Digital shared the results of a SAE technical paper on mapping requirements for AD and ADAS. His presentation focused on unresolved issues in HD map creation: the economics and feasibility of scaling HD map creation globally, detecting changes in map content or updating a map, and validating map content to contribute to system safety. For each of these topics, he also shared his personal views on how to approach these problems – many of which included the recommendation for standardization. The technical paper can be purchased from SAE.

In the standardization organizations’ part of the event, representatives briefly introduced their organizations and provided information on their recent activities around automated driving.

• Jean-Charles Pandazis from ERTICO reported on ADASIS v3.2, released internally, which can be used by AD software developers, and on the planning of ADASIS v3.3 to include a low level protocol.
• Nicco Hagedorn from ASAM presented the latest OpenX roadmap and reported on recent work on ASAM OpenLabel and ASAM Open Operational Design Domains (ODD).
• Martin Schleicher, Elektrobit’s representative to NDS, focused on use cases and design principles of the NDS.Live specification and presented the NDS roadmap.
• András Csepinszky from NNG reported on SENSORIS achievements and on the collaboration with related activities such as OADF.
• Satoru Nakajo from the University of Tokyo reported on SIP-adus, including the results of the 2020 Field Operational Test (FOT), the planning for 2021, and SIP-adus related activities.
• Matthias Unbehaun from TISA reported on the progress of TPEG3 development presented some AD use cases that are used for guiding these development activities.
• Christian Kleine from HERE Technologies reported on TN-ITS tools in development, its partnership with CEN/TC278, the TN-ITS roadmap, and the interface with NAPCORE projects.

The continued high attendance showed that the OADF event is well received. Andras Csepinszky announced that new OADF events are planned for in 2022. The dates and formats will be announced in due course.

More than 180 automotive experts from all over the world joined the 14^th Open Auto Drive Forum event to discuss advancements in standardization related to automated and autonomous driving. 

Before the official start of the meeting a workshop for the on-site participants took place under the lead of Teun Hendriks from TISA. In this workshop, the OADF ecosystem architecture was jointly reviewed. In addition, the in-person participants analyzed the flow of data through the OADF ecosystem for a number of use cases.

Following the tradition, Matthias Unbehaun, OADF Speaker and TISA Executive Director opened the main event with the invited guest speakers and the progress updates from standardization organizations.

The first guest speaker was Dr. Wei Luo, COO and Head of Product at DeepMap. In her presentation Wei focused on the role of HD maps and map accuracy in L2+ AV system. This was followed by Dr. Martin Pfeifle, CTO of NNG, who demonstrated how NNG is using an NDS-based navigation SDK for Automated Driving. Safe and reliable maps for Automated Driving were the topic of the 3^rd presentation, held by Steffen Kuhn, Head of Consulting at Elektrobit.

The standardization organizations reported on their latest activities regarding Automated Driving:

• Jean-Charles Pandazis from ERTICO reported on ADASIS announcing v3.2 internal release, including the fully defined API, ready to be used by AD software developers.
• Benjamin Engel from ASAM presented the new ASAM Open Simulation Interface.
• Martin Schleicher from Elektrobit gave insights into NDS.Live, the next generation of the Navigation Data Standard (NDS) standard. It offers more flexibility in terms of data management and deployment, supporting the connected and automated cars of today and of the future.
• Andras Csepinszky from NNG reported on SENSORIS’ objectives and updated version planning.
• Satoru Nakajo from the University of Tokyo on SIP-adus gave an update on the ongoing FOT in Tokyo.
• Teun Hendriks reported on the TISA activities for developing TPEG3 protocols to provide real-time information dedicated for AD vehicles as well as some lead use cases.
• Christian Kleine from HERE Technologies summarized TN-ITS and its implementation status.

The event was organized as a hybrid in-person/online event on September 23, 2020. To allow participants from America to join, the meeting was started relatively late for Europeans. For on-site participants, it took place in Frankfurt/Germany. Around 15 persons came to Frankfurt respecting the ‘Corona rules’, another 170 participants joined the meeting online.

The organization of the 14^th OADF meeting as a hybrid event with many speakers and attendees was quite demanding. However, the participants appreciated this way of conducting the of meeting: It comes with the benefits of a face-to-face meeting for those who can join in person, while still allowing for remote participation for those who cannot travel.

The next OADF meeting will take place in 2021. The date and format of the event will be announced in due time.