aFAS – How to Get a Driverless Prototype on the Road?

Mobile road works on highway hard shoulder lanes are usually protected against on-coming traffic by protective vehicles equipped with a mobile warning trailer. The service staff operating the protection vehicle for road maintenance works have a high degree of risk of being involved into severe accidents with surrounding traffic. With the motivation to reduce this risk, the “Automatic unmanned protective vehicle for mobile construction sites on motor highways” (aFAS) project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), started in August 2014. The aim of this project is to develop an unmanned protective vehicle which is capable to perform this task driverless by automatically following mobile roadworks – or a preceding work vehicle equipped with V2V technology respectively.