RWTH Receives DFG Approval for Innovative Research Group Initiative

Four universities have joined forces to research the degree of automation in road traffic.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is setting up seven new research groups. The RWTH application for the research group “MiRoVA – Migration of Road Vehicle Automation” has also been approved. Over the next four years, RWTH will be cooperating with the TU Darmstadt, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the TU Munich. The spokesperson for the research group will be Professor Frank Flemisch from the RWTH Department of System Ergonomics. The German Research Foundation is providing a total of three million euros in funding for the work.

In the long term, road traffic will be highly automated. In the coming decades, however, mixed forms with increasing degrees of automation will be dominant. People will switch between vehicles that have different levels of automation. This can lead to problems and even accidents, for example due to unrealistic expectations regarding the degree of automation. It can also affect traffic flow, for example when highly automated vehicles interpret safety distances differently than humans would. The research focuses on three situations: pedestrian crossings, highway on-ramps and changing lanes on highways. In addition, the question of how people interact and cooperate with automation variants is also dealt with.