Last modified on February 12, 2024

Standards

Standardisation is the process by which specifications are set. The majority of the standards are engineering criteria developed by the technology community that specify how a product should be designed or how it should perform. In other words they help to build focus especially in the emerging stages of technology. Standards usually complement regulations to set the requirements that a product has to satisfy in order to be approved for market introduction. While standards and regulations would seem to have different objectives, in fact they often intersect, and in some cases act as policy instruments used to address safety, environment and play important role in the emergence and development of technologies and markets.

Automated vehicle technology presents a huge challenge to standardisation and legal bodies. This is a new, rapidly emerging domain where several standards, both, formal and informal exist. As the issuing bodies are diverse the complete standardisation system lacks agility and focus on core technologies. No link between standards from different stakeholders can be found in most cases, even though they are partly dealing with similar topics.

Advances in key automated driving technologies have led to big improvements and expectations into the automotive market. Experts on automated driving and the industry in general consider as high priority the need for swift establishment of global standards in order for related automated driving technologies to further advance. That being said any standardisation process should consider the major objective is not to create a closed ecosystem where one-size fits all but instead support interoperability between different vendor solutions.

The increasing number of new on-board equipment and the complexity of handling a large number of data require a set of standards to be in place. This way we will address system specific architectural decisions and constraints to ensure operational efficiency while providing a safe environment. Surely standards should not give details on implementation issues since there must be some freedom for products to differ in design and performance. Nevertheless standards are typically developed through an open collaborative process and they should remove the barriers that prevent innovative, competitive products and services entering markets.

We should highlight that it is important to have global standardisation for a timely and cost efficient market development of connected and Automated Driving (AD). Standardisation is also required to help overcome barriers associated with public acceptance while promoting public policy which is sensitive to the needs and aspiration of society.

Several automotive societies began research to explore the priorities for standards to support the development and deployment of Cooperative, Connected and Automated Driving (CAD). A lack of standards and the diversity of automated driving systems does present one obvious challenge and that is vehicle interaction. Standards may not come necessarily from the car platform itself, but from the communications side. We already have some automated features on the market but still standardisation for automation may be considered in its early stages.

Overall, standardisation generates standards, which are an essential component of a more efficient and competitive industry. The key to maximising the positive impact of standardisation is to develop synergies inside the European standardisation system, taking into account also the international dimension of standardisation.

Background

This site overviews the most recent trends and current international efforts to support CAD developers and manufactures with the standard framework. The focus is especially put on better connecting R&D results to new standards, as well as for improved collaboration between standard setting organisations in Europe and internationally. The development and deployment of CAD requires public and private funding, which may take more time than expected even though the technology is available. The European Commission (EC) is working to increase its momentum and position in the sector. EC is already actively promoting the use of automotive safety standards around the world including its free trade agreements. Currently, and through the EC’s Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes, a step forward has been taken in allocating public funding for research activities aiming at developing innovative solutions for CAD.

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