A racetrack in Riga, Latvia, recently served as the testbed for the 5G-Routes project, imitating cross-border connectivity. SmartCitiesWorld reported participants demonstrated four use cases to test “connected and automated mobility innovations” before rolling out across Europe.
The testbed has been developed by the Latvian mobile operator LMT, in collaboration with Estonia’s Telia, to assess cross-border connectivity. The Latvian Institute of Electronics and Computer Science, The Vedecom Institute for the Energy Transition, and Tallinn University of Technology (TTU) performed multiple use cases during the trial.
According to SmartCitiesWorld, the Latvian Institute showcased dynamic vehicles “platooning,” using an intelligent transportation system application enabling vehicles to drive in close cooperative formations. The test used only vehicle data sent and received over a commercial 5G network.
The Vedecom Institute and TTU tested two interconnected use cases; the first was a vulnerable road user (VRU) collision avoidance and the second, connected maintenance. In the demo, a pedestrian received alerts (via sensors) from a connected electric vehicle warning them of a potential collision, leaving enough time to avoid an impact. The VRU and the electric vehicle were each connected to a different mobile operator, putting cross-border connectivity to the test, reported SmartCitiesWorld.
5G-Routes is an EU-funded future mobility initiative to develop innovative and commercially exploitable connected and automated mobility use cases to ensure cross-border automated mobility. The consortium, formed in 2020, comprises 21 partners from nine European countries. Additional test sites include the Latvian-Estonian border and the Finnish-Estonian cross border.
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