Impulse Project 5: "AVENUE" - Automated and Connected Electric Vehicles before, during and after an Accident

The AVENUE research project has been successfully completed after four years. It combines accident analysis with the roadworthiness test (HU) of the future and aims to improve our understanding of automated vehicle technologies, make them safer and develop new testing methods.

Accident analysis: new approaches

Many accidents involving driver assistance systems have so far been difficult to reconstruct – particularly in collisions with vulnerable road users. AVENUE provided new insights into this through extensive expert surveys, test drives, system tests (e.g. Tesla Autopilot, VW Travel Assist) and analyses of C2X communication.
The results show, amongst other things:

• Driver assistance systems can react incorrectly when cornering or braking
• Drivers react differently to warnings
• C2X data offers great potential as a digital accident timeline

A newly developed method enables, for the first time, the precise reconstruction of accidents based on vehicle communication data.

Mixed reality for courts and accident analysis

Accidents are visualised using 3D scanning, simulation and virtual reality. This enables courts to reconstruct the sequence of events in a realistic manner from various perspectives – an important step towards transparent assessments.

The future of roadworthiness testing: How do you test an automated vehicle?

AVENUE developed new testing approaches for automated vehicles, including:

• Test procedures for camera systems
• Comparison of the vehicle’s perception with the real environment
• Fundamentals for databases of automated driving functions

A specially equipped Tesla Model 3 served as the research vehicle.

Result: AVENUE has demonstrated that automated vehicles require new measurement methods, new data sources and new forms of visualisation. The project delivers all of this – thereby laying the foundations for safer mobility, improved accident investigation and a modern vehicle inspection system that keeps pace with technological change. The findings are being incorporated into a new research centre for vehicle forensics (Building Q, Ingolstadt South) and into the Master’s programme in Accident Analysis, and will be further developed in follow-up projects.