Call: Safe and connected automation in road transport

• Health, demographic change and wellbeing;
• Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research, and the Bioeconomy;
• Secure, clean and efficient energy;
• Smart, green and integrated transport;
• Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials;
• Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies;
• Secure societies - protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens.

Within this programme Horizon 2020 will provide funding for a resource efficient transport that respects the environment, aims at a better mobility, less congestion, more safety and security, supports a global leadership for the European transport industry and targets a socio-economic and behavioural research and forward looking activities for policy making.

Transport is on the brink of a new era of "Smart Mobility'' where infrastructure, transport means, travellers and goods will be increasingly interconnected to achieve optimised door-to-door mobility, higher safety, less environmental impact and lower operations costs. In order to achieve efficiency at system-level, targeted efforts are needed to develop and validate new solutions that can be rapidly deployed, notably on corridors and in urban areas. They will address transport means and infrastructure and integrate them into a user friendly European transport system of smart connected mobility and logistics. Research and innovation on equipment and systems for vehicles, aircraft and vessels will make them smarter, more automated, cleaner and quieter, while reducing the use of fossil fuels. Research and innovation on smart infrastructure solutions is necessary to deploy innovative traffic management and information systems, advanced traveller services, efficient logistics, construction and maintenance technologies. A thorough and mature research and innovation agenda for this Call has been defined taking into account the other calls and initiatives where the Transport Challenge is concerned, i.e. the calls on ‘Green Vehicles’, ‘Small Business Innovation for Transport’, ‘Blue Growth’, and ‘Smart Cities and Communities’, and the ‘Clean Sky 2’, ‘SESAR’, ‘Shift2Rail’ and ‘Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2’ Joint Undertakings (in different degrees of preparation). In addition, European GNSS will provide new opportunities for the localisation and the guidance of vehicles. It is intended to create synergies with all these initiatives as well as with other parts of Horizon 2020, namely Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Energy and Space. Special attention is dedicated to innovation aspects not covered in the other parts of the Transport Challenge, as well as to SMEs.

Automated and progressively autonomous driving applications in road transport, actively interacting with their intelligent environment could provide an answer to the EU objective of reconciling growing mobility needs with more efficient transport operations, lower environmental impacts and increased road safety.

Automation in road transport should make best use of the evolution of Cooperative ITS and the benefits made available by satellite navigation systems, such as the increased accuracy and robustness. Connectivity and cooperative mobility will be the key driving force for integrating automation into novel mobility concepts enabled by the European Wide Service Platforms (EWSP). Security and safety aspects of these systems are also crucial.