The Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) is a competition where semi-autonomous vehicles are assigned the task of cooperatively driving in platoons. GCDC aims at demonstrating that cooperative driving technology can contribute to reduce traffic jams and accelerate innovative solutions for better mobility.

A vehicles platoon consists of a number of vehicles in a line traveling at a given speed. A common task for vehicles in a platoon is to follow the speed of the platoon leader while maintaining a short, yet safe, distance from the preceding vehicle and damping traffic shockwaves. This objective is achieved by equipping the vehicles with a system controlling engine and brakes, based on information exchanged with surrounding vehicles and with the road infrastructure.

Cooperative driving technology set different challenges ranging from reliable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication to sensor fusion, to control.

S2 team equipped a Volvo S60 with a complete cooperative driving system
- in only three months!

Needless to say, Chalmers accepted this challenge and joined the GCDC on fall 2010. SAFER, Volvo Car Corporation, Denso, Viktoria Institute, AB Volvo and Chalmers University supported a team of S2 master thesis students, PhDs and former master students.

The brand new Volvo S60 was received at the end of January and after only three months the Chalmers team successfully achieved the first cooperative driving test, in collaboration with the other participating Swedish teams (KTH and Halmstad).

The final GCDC event took place in Helmond, The Netheralands on May 14 and 15. Eleven international teams participated. An intense work of fine tuning of the whole system in a real platooning scenario led to a smooth and natural driving behavior. Chalmers team ended the competition with a third place. This is an encouraging starting point for further development of Chalmers competences in such exciting research area.

The team from Chalmers, department of Signals and systems:

Bruno Augusto. Nationality: Portuguese.
Role: Team leader. Supervision of the whole cooperative driving system development.Current employment: Project assistant at the Department of Signals and Systems (former master student at MPSYS).

Josef Nilsson. Nationality: Swedish.
Role: Co-team leader. System architecture designer. System integration. Driver.Current employment: PhD Student at SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden.

Reza Sadeghitabar. Nationality: Iranian.
Role: Responsible for system integration, real-time implementation, testing and verification.Current employment: Master student in System, Control and Mechatronics.Currently working on master thesis. Supervisor: Paolo Falcone.

Alireza Ebadi Ghajari. Nationality: Iranian.Role: Control design and testing.Current employment: Master student in System, Control and Mechatronics. Currently working on master thesis. Supervisor: Paolo Falcone.

Usman Hakeem. Nationality: Pakistan.Role: Responsible for communication, implementation of the interaction protocol.Current employment: Master student in Communication Engineering. Currently working on master thesis. Supervisor: Eric Ström and Stylianos Papanastasiou.

Naga VishnuKanth Irukulapati. Nationality: Indian.Role: Responsible for sensor fusion algorithms.Current employment: Master student in Communication Engineering. Currently working on master thesis. Supervisor: Lennart Svensson and Henk Wymeersch.

Ali Raza. Nationality: Pakistan.Role: Development communication, implementation of the interaction protocol.Current employment: Master student in Communication Engineering. Currently working on master thesis. Supervisor: Eric Ström and Stylianos Papanastasiou.

The vehicles were given tasks for both urban and highway situations. The winner was determined following a series of contests and positional changes among the vehicles.

“So the vehicle that responded quickest to the shockwave and had the least amount of road space necessary to do so was the winner,” explains Bastiaan Krosse, Senior Project Manager for Mobility at TNO.

More about the event: http://www.gcdc.net/