SaCoAV: Methods and Tools to Improve the Safety and Coordination of Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are complex systems that must operate safely and in a coordinated manner in real time, considering the presence of other vehicles, people, roads, and obstacles. While significant progress has been made in the safety and control of individual autonomous vehicles, coordinating multiple autonomous vehicles remains a major challenge. The SaCoAV project tackled this issue to make such coordination more efficient, thereby reducing traffic and pollution, while also enabling the effective implementation of mobility solutions.

The project combined two key concepts:

1. Development of algorithms to coordinate the movements and activities of connected autonomous vehicles in urban settings.
   
2. Integration of safety and cybersecurity mechanisms to ensure proper vehicle operation in the event of errors, unexpected changes, or malicious attacks on communication links.
   
   

Specifically, the project achieved the following:

• Developed algorithms to coordinate multiple vehicles, considering safety and cybersecurity aspects.
  
• Integrated learning mechanisms into the developed coordination strategies.
  
• Created algorithms to detect security issues, including events and failures during coordination.
  
• Developed technologies to identify vulnerabilities in communications arising from cyberattacks.
  
• Proposed algorithms to reconfigure coordination actions in the face of security or cybersecurity issues.
  
• Applied the algorithms in realistic coordination scenarios involving various vehicles such as drones, mobile robots, and autonomous cars, in collaboration with other expert research teams (both national and international partnerships).
  
  

Impact

SaCoAV has significantly advanced the field of safe and coordinated autonomous mobility, addressing one of today’s key challenges: the collective and secure management of multiple autonomous vehicles in complex urban environments. The project will contribute to improving traffic efficiency, reducing pollution, and enhancing road safety.

Budget and Funding

The project involved several UPC research groups: Advanced Control Systems (SAC), the Research Center for Supervision, Safety and Automatic Control (CS2AC-UPC), the Centre for Hydrogen Research of the UPC (CER-H2), and Smart Control Systems (SIC). SaCoAV had a total budget of €244,420 and lasted 3 years (September 2021 – August 2024). It was funded by the Spanish State Research Agency under the Spanish R&D and Innovation Programme 2017–2020.