Today automatic operation in metros and people movers is a reality. Most modern metro lines implement or are prepared for high grades of automation (GoA4). Experience has demonstrated enormous benefits where automatic train operation (ATO) is in place, such as:
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Increased capacity;
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Reduced energy consumption (up to 20% less);
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Reduced components’ wear and tear for both train and track components;
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Increased availability and punctuality of the system due to increased resilience;
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Economic competitiveness by increased capacity;
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Lower operating costs with simultaneously increased system resilience, or;
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Better offer and more flexibility by real-time adaptation to the demand.
These benefits could also be provided by more automated and autonomous operations in other rail transport segments, such as regional and suburban trains, high-speed trains, freight trains or light rail and tramways. Indeed, in the future envisaged autonomous mobility ecosystem the whole railway system will require higher degrees of automation for its seamless integration in such ecosystem, to be done in a standardised way and also meeting interoperability requirements. This also implicitly means that legacy systems (i.e. comprehensive network until 2050, segregated, suburban and local networks) will have to support automation to unblock a pan-European deployment of ATO and a seamless automatic/autonomous operation along Europe, also interfacing other autonomous transport modes. Doubtless, automation and autonomy of rail assets directly and significantly contribute to at least two of the European Commission’s priorities for the period 2019-2024: The European Green Deal (fighting climate change) and the Europe fit for the digital age (digital technologies including artificial intelligence). Achieving this vision of such grade of automation in railways is not straightforward and will require additional R&I efforts. In this sense ERRAC has identified several challenges to be overcome in the period 2020 to 2030 in the field of automation (ERRAC’s Rail 2030 – Research and innovation priorities1):
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Reliable and accurate train positioning, supported by appropriate sensors to achieve the required safety levels;
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Advanced TCMS with enhanced safety features fulfilling additional automation requirements;
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A reliable and robust internal and external environment perception of the vehicle as well as the external surrounding and an effective telecommunication system able to manage connection, resp. data sharing, between infrastructure and vehicles, and between vehicles, to enable on-board decision-making intelligence;
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Infrastructure and environment monitoring through sensors and artificial intelligence, and;
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Self-healing/management of vehicles, intelligent closed-circuit television (CCTV), smart subsystems in general, ready for remote control and supervision.
In addition, the STRIA Roadmap on Connected and Automated Transport defines a number of actions to be undertaken by the rail community in the next years in the area of rail automation, among other, to develop:
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Reliable environment perception to identify all external hazards and to detect trackside signals enabling onboard decision-making intelligence;
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Reliable train positioning;
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Enhanced Train Control and Monitoring System (TCMS), or;
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Reliable external and internal environment perception (outside ATO).
The challenges brought by STRIA and ERRAC call for additional set of R&I activities to seamlessly bridge the S2R JU MAAP and the future Horizon Europe R&I Programme. In order to provide solutions for the future of automated and autonomous systems for railways TAURO has an overarching and ambitious goal:
The high-level objective of TAURO is to identify, analyse and finally propose suitable founding technologies for the future European automated and autonomous rail transport, to be further developed, certified and deployed through the activities planned for the European Partnership for Transforming Europe’s Rail System.
To achieve this, the partners have broken the work down into four technical WPs, following the scope of the call, that each deal with separate system elements, with each contributing to the overall goal of the project. These four areas of work are:
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Environment perception for automation
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Remote driving and command
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Automatic status monitoring and diagnostic for autonomous trains
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Technologies supporting migration to ATO over ETCS