The Brenner Motorway as a Living Lab for Testing on CCAM

Autostrada del Brennero stands as a real laboratory, in Italy and in Europe, of connected driving. The focus is on I2V communication, i.e. between the intelligent infrastructure (the motorway operator) and the vehicles, which are in turn interconnected with each other. The great leap forward will only be made when the motorway is able to communicate directly with vehicles, giving and receiving information, thus reducing human error and increasing the capacity of existing motorways without further land consumption.

Following the diffusion of C-ITS systems, road operators are called to prepare the infrastructure in a way to allow the use of cooperative systems for the communications exchange between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I - I2V). It is necessary to work in synergy with all players involved in infrastructure-to-vehicle communication, i.e. service providers, road operators and the automotive industry. This is the big step to take. And the Brenner Motorway has started by setting up a C-ITS infrastructure that guarantees this communication, which is above all harmonised at European level and ensures system interoperability across borders. The main achievement was to develop a message transmission protocol that would reach the vehicles via a C-ITS server.

This infrastructure has been intensively tested as part of different European projects and Autostrada del Brennero has also hosted tests of Truck Platooning and Highway Chauffeur, two connected driving applications that have benefited from the messaging received by the infrastructure.