The project partners of the research project integrated communications platform for automated electric vehicles (iKoPA) presented on May 23, 2018 in Merzig the technical groundwork for a communications system that will accelerate the implementation of mobility services for automated electric mobility by simple, secure and privacy-aware concepts. Technologies that have been advanced by the project were presented during demonstration drives. In addition to Car-to-X-communication and RFID-authentication, concrete services for the automated electric car were shown, like charging station reservation and green-phase prediction for an energy-saving “green wave”.

In the research initiative iKoPA, that started in December 2015 and is supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), eight partners work on the data protection compliant fusion of vehicle sensors with external data and mobility services. iKoPA unites existing and new technologies and presents a communication architecture based on a secure and the privacy of the user respecting data transfer between driver, vehicle and infrastructure.

In this process, iKoPA brings together technologies in an innovative manner. It works by a multiple communications approach with the assist of Car-to-X-communication, digital audio broadcast (DAB+), RFID and mobile communications as well as the integration of driver assistance system architectures to support highly and fully automated driving manoeuvres. The electronic systems of the electric vehicles can exchange data with service providers in a secure way via the extended Car2X system network. A special emphasis lies on the development of concepts to secure the privacy of the communicating participants. For this purpose, existing and newly developed communications concepts and mechanisms for pseudonymization have been merged. With the integration into the traffic infrastructure, like traffic lights and charging stations, new and optimized drive, parking and charging functions with a high to full degree of automation will become possible.

Project iKoPA develops the basis for a system that connects future services in the sector of intelligent traffic and automated driving as an open integration platform in an innovative, secure, privacy-friendly and comprehensive manner. The introduction of electric mobility applications will be accelerated by the increase of additional benefits and serves as the basis for a vision of the automated and electric mobility of the future. The project runs until November 2018.

The technical demonstration of the overall system in Merzig illustrated the current state of progress of project iKoPA and the latest research results in a demonstration drive with two test vehicles, a scientific presentation and an expert poster session.

The demonstration is part of the current project phase of iKoPA. In this phase, the virtual and technical testing of the developed architecture is carried out in simulations and in an additional demonstration of the overall system at the end of the year in Berlin. The work in this phase is based on the requirement analysis previously conducted in the project and the subsequently developed system architecture. The system architecture forms the basis for the prototype systems that were shown during the demonstration.

The project partners

Bayerische Medien Technik (bmt) GmbH, Fraunhofer-Institut für Offene Kommunikationssysteme (FOKUS), Fraunhofer-Institut für Sichere Informationstechnologie (SIT), Daimler Center for Automotive Information Technology Innovations (DCAITI) of the TU Berlin, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft des Saarlandes (htw saar), SWARCO Traffic Systems GmbH, NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH and the Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein (ULD).

Further information: https://ikopa.de