Author: Markus Junker

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.

The 13th Open Auto Drive Forum event took place on July 9. It was the first OADF online-only event and a completely new experience. Almost 250 participants joined the meeting – more than twice as much as in the ‘traditional’ meetings.

The meeting was opened by Matthias Unbehaun, OADF Speaker and TISA Executive Director and Liu Jun, founder and CEO of Kuandeng Technology in China – who originally wanted to host the meeting in Beijing.

The invited speeches this time addressed the evaluation of HD map quality (Liu Jun), the benefits of standardization for Automated Driving development (Hannah Theuer, BMW) and an update on safe and reliable maps for Automated Driving (Yali Wang from Baidu).

Again, the standardization organizations reported on their latest activities regarding automated driving: Jean-Charles Pandazis from ERTICO reported on ADASIS, Klaus Estenfeld from ASAM on the OpenX standards, Martin Schleicher from Elektrobit on the Navigation Data Standard (NDS), Stefaan Follens from TomTom on SENSORIS, Satoru Nakajo from the University of Tokyo on SIP-adus, Matthias Unbehaun on TISA and Christian Kleine from HERE on TN-ITS.

A new experience in the meeting was the interaction between the attendees and the speakers. The participants asked almost 100 questions relating to the presentations. Only some of them could be answered live. However, the speakers shared the answers to most questions after their presentation in writing. The interaction with the attendees was complemented by 20 ad-hoc polls which the speakers initiated during their presentation. The standardization organizations represented in OADF will now review the feedback in detail and discuss, how the findings can be included in their individual work as well as in the cross-organizational cooperationThe next OADF event is currently planned for September 23, 2020 in Frankfurt Germany with the possibility to participate remotely.

The 12th Open Auto Drive Forum event on June 12 took place in the Leonardo Royal Hotel in Munich, Germany. With nearly 120 participants, it was the best-visited OADF event ever. At the beginning, Matthias Unbehaun, OADF Speaker and TISA Executive Director, introduced the new participants to the history, structure and objectives of the forum: The OADF aims to foster the collaboration of standardization organizations and individual experts for enabling automated driving with map support.

The program of the day consisted of inspiring speeches on making maps reliable for automated driving (Yali Wang from Baidu and Steffen Kuhn from Elektrobit), on generating HD maps from space (Hartmut Runge from the German Aerospace Center) and on a collaborative platform for updating maps (Emil Dautovic from Mapillary).

Following the tradition of the Open Auto Drive Forum events, all member organizations reported on their latest activities regarding automated driving: Jean-Charles Pandazis from ERTICO reported on ADASIS, Martin Schleicher from Elektrobit on the Navigation Data Standard (NDS), Prokop Jehlicka from HERE Technologies on SENSORIS, Matthias Unbehaun on TISA and Satoru Nakajo from the University of Tokyo on SIP-adus. Furthermore, Klaus Estenfeld from ASAM reported on the OpenDrive standard for supporting driving simulations and on related activities in ASAM. Last but not least Christian Kleine from HERE gave insights to TN-ITS and its recent activities.

Around the lunch break, the meeting participants took the opportunity to discuss pressing topics for automated driving in a ‘World Café’. The discussions addressed the need for maps for automated driving, the need for the identification of stopping places for autonomous cars and highly reliable maps. Also, ways for improving the collaboration between Japan and Europe were discussed. The Word Café has proven to be a tool perfectly fitting to the spirit of the OADF of fostering the exchange of experts from different standardization organizations.

The next OADF event will be hosted by Kuandeng and take place on February 18th, 2020 in Beijing, China.

On February 5, the Electronics Research Lab (ERL) of Volkswagen Group of America in Belmont, CA, hosted the 11th meeting of the Open Auto Drive forum. Nikolai Reimer, Senior Vice President and Executive Director ERL, and Mattias Unbehaun, OADF Speaker and TISA Executive Director, opened the meeting.

In their keynote ‘Autonomous Driving, past present and future’ Nikhil George and Subramanian Swaminathan from ERL first described the various autonomous demonstration vehicles developed by Volkswagen since 2005 and their successes in DARPA and other challenges. The second part of the keynote focused on the technologies required for autonomous driving with the key elements being sensors, connectivity and machine learning. The presentation illustrated very well the necessity of HD maps for making automated driving a reality – being also a core component connecting all OADF member organizations. The keynote was complemented by short presentations of two promising start-ups: ‘Helm AI’, providing deep learning solutions for autonomous driving, and ‘Applied Intuition’ offering infrastructures for the development, testing and deployment of autonomous driving.

In the introduction to OADF, Matthias Unbehaun re-called the objectives of the OADF, namely, to serve as global platform for sharing knowledge, networking and collaboration between all stakeholders in the automated/ autonomous driving realm. He announced that SIP-adus, the Japanese cross-ministerial program for enabling autonomous driving, has just become the 5th official member organization in OADF – next to ADASIS, NDS, SENSORIS and TISA. The inclusion of SIP-adus and the coordination and harmonization with this Japanese program is an important milestone for OADF.

Matthias Unbehaun’s introduction was followed by updates from the different standardization organizations: Jean-Charles Pandazis from ERTICO reported on ADASIS, Martin Schleicher from Elektrobit on the Navigation Data Standard (NDS), Prokop Jehlicka from HERE Technologies on SENSORIS, Matthias Unbehaun on TISA, Hiroki Sakai from the Mitsubishi Research Institute on SIP-adus and Matthias Unbehaun – as a proxy for Michael Scholz from DLR – on OpenDRIVE. The presentations were complemented by a report from Prokop Jehlicka on the achievements towards the metadata catalogue which aims at bridging different representations in standards relevant for autonomous driving.

In the afternoon, the meeting participants had the opportunity for detailed discussions on the ‘NDS next generation architecture’, on ‘highly reliable maps’ and on the ‘metadata catalogue’. The day was rounded up by a wrap-up by Matthias Unbehaun.

Again, the OADF meeting attracted many interested experts in the field and led to interesting and fruitful discussions. The 12th OADF meeting is planned for June 12 in Munich, Germany, and will be collocated with the first NDS public conference on June 13.

On July 12, 2018, the Open Auto Drive Forum (OADF) organized its 10th meeting in Wuhan, P.R. China. The meeting was hosted by SAIC Kotei Big Data Cooperation (SAIC KBD), a joint venture between the car manufacturer SAIC Motor Corporation and Kotei Wuhan Informatics.

The meeting was opened by Wang Junde, CEO of Wuhan Kotei Informatics and Director of SAIC KBD. The company was exclusively founded for providing HD maps for automated driving, high precision localization support and big data analysis. In the keynote speech Yudong Li gave interesting insights into the history and development of the joint venture. He presented SAIC KBD’s HAD map ecosystem and their multi-source acquisition process for the maps. By 2019, it is planned to have the complete highway network in China covered plus 33.000km in urban environments.

As many participants were new to the forum, OADF speaker Dr. Matthias Unbehaun gave a short overview of the history, objectives and organizational structure of the forum. OADF aims to be the global platform for sharing knowledge, networking and collaboration between all stakeholders in the automated/autonomous driving realm.

Following the traditional structure of the OADF meetings, the remainder of the morning was used for updates from standardization bodies. Ming Zhang from Bosch reported on ADASIS, Andras Csepinszky from NNG on the Navigation Data Standard (NDS) Association, Prokop Jehlicka from HERE Technologies on SENSORIS, Dr. Matthias Unbehaun from TISA on TPEG3, Hiroki Sakai from the Mitsubishi Research Institute on SIP-adus and Michael Scholz from DLR on OpenDRIVE.

In the afternoon, the meeting participants were updated on the status of the cross-organizational working areas in OADF: the evolvement of the OADF Reference Ecosystem, the preparation of highly reliable maps for automated driving as well as the preparation of interfaces between the different format specifications by implementing a directory of attribute descriptions and mappings.

Within just three years, the Open Auto Drive forum and its three meetings per year across the continents have proven to ensure a continuous information exchange and alignment of all stakeholders dealing with maps in the context of automated driving. Following this spirit, the 11th meeting is planned before the end of the year in the Americas.