The Technical University of Dresden will be supported with € 5.2 million and will be responsible for project management for the work packages "Vehicle" and "Infrastructure" and will be involved with a total of six professorships.

The ABSOLUT innovation and development project was launched today with a kick-off meeting of all project partners at the Congress Center in Leipzig. Project partners include industry, the scientific community, and the City of Leipzig. In the project, the partners will be working closely with the transport companies that have taken over the project management. The core concept of ABSOLUT is to develop highly-automated vehicles and to test them at locally-permitted speeds on a test route from the suburban railway station "Messe" to the BMW works. The aim is to integrate these vehicles into local transport company services in the future.

In addition to testing and approving the new vehicles that will be constructed, a further focus of development will be on operating them in pilot projects in public areas in order to evaluate various deployment concepts. This includes a needs-based service that is available round the clock or by order, a booking and information interface developed together with users, as well as the establishment of a networked control center. This will be accompanied by a survey to evaluate people’s level of acceptance when it comes to using autonomous bus services.

More climate protection, less dependence on fossil fuels and new technologies will change mobility and its players considerably. The further development of electromobility and artificial intelligence are topics that are highly relevant to the future of the German industry. As part of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) scheme to promote electromobility, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is funding this individual strategic project to the tune of around 10 million euros. It also reflects the objective of the Free State of Saxony to devise and support concrete pilot measures to develop and expand autonomous transport systems.

For more information on the project, please visit the project homepage. Articles on the project written by the various partners can be found as an appendix in the partner profiles. The professorships involved at the TU-Dresden are:

• Chair of Vehicle Mechatronics
• Chair of Traffic Control and Process Automation
• Institute of Lighteight Engineering and Polymer Technology
• Chair of Automobile Engineering
• Chair of Computer Graphics and Visualisation
• Chair of Power Electronics