by Elisabeth Uhlemann

The Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) may take cooperative automation of vehicles to the next level and help speed up implementation. The 2016 edition, which took place 28–29 May, was an innovative and competitive demo event on the A270 highway between Helmond and Eindhoven, in which 10–12 European teams competed with each other. The challenge was a combination of vehicle automation (making it selfdriving) and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. GCDC 2016 was organized to provide a basis for cooperative, automated driving in an international context.

GCDC 2016 was the second edition. The first GCDC was held in May 2011 in Helmond, The Netherlands. The challenge is open for anyone interested in cooperative driving. Apart from the communication technology itself, it is the application in the vehicles that is key to enabling good maneuverability through automated acceleration, braking, and steering. Three different automated lane-changing scenarios were considered:

• Vehicles that merge or join a line of vehicles, a platoon (before changing lanes, the vehicles automatically negotiate how to merge the new vehicle into the line)
• Automated crossing and exiting a junction (when entering a T-junction, the vehicles automatically negotiate which vehicle passes first, second, third, and so on)
• Automated space-making for emergency vehicles in a traffic jam (this scenario is a demo scenario that was not part of the competition).

Ten teams from Latvia, Spain, France, Germany, Holland, and Sweden took part in the contest. The winners were students from Halmstad University, Sweden, competing with a Volvo S60. Second place was awarded to Team AnnieWay from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, competing with a passenger car from Mercedes. The third-place team was from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, competing with a Scania truck. GCDC 2016 was organized within the FP7 project i-Game, with four partners: The Netherlands Organization (TNO) for Applied Scientific Research, Eindhoven University of Technology, IDIADA, and Viktoria Swedish ICT.

Full article: IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Volume 11, Number 3, September 2016