Delphi Automotive has been selected by the Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA) as a strategic partner to implement autonomous mobility concepts and technologies.
Delphi will provide a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles and will develop a cloud-based mobility-on-demand software suite, opening up new potential autonomous markets for Delphi’s customers. The company will conduct a trial of an urban, point-to-point, low-speed, autonomous, mobility-on-demand service in Singapore’s Autonomous Vehicles Test Bed located at one-north, a business park in the western area of the city.
Meanwhile the Singapore LTA and JTC, in partnership with the Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore), has launched the Centre of Excellence for Testing and Research of AVs – NTU (CETRAN) and Test Circuit at the CleanTech Park in the Jurong Innovation District.
CETRAN will spearhead the development of testing requirements for self-driving vehicles SDVs, as there is no existing international standard. This would allow them to be integrated with existing road traffic. These efforts will be supported by the 1.8-ha CETRAN Test Circuit, jointly developed by LTA and JTC to provide a simulated road environment for the testing of SDVs prior to their deployment on public roads.
Senior minister of state for transport Josephine Teo said, “Although many countries and cities are testing self-driving vehicles, we have yet to see international standards and regulations suitable for large-scale deployment of SDVs.”
NTU will lead research activities at CETRAN, operate the test circuit and evaluate the SDV prototypes to be tested here. For example, the prototypes must display the ability to maneuver in local conditions such as traffic rules, traffic behavior, road design and Singapore’s tropical climate. The test circuit will also be open to industry players for the development and testing of their own SDVs as they work towards meeting the standards set by CETRAN. It is expected to be operational in the second half of 2017.
CETRAN will house an expert research team formed by NTU that will perform testing in a computer-simulated environment representative of Singapore’s traffic conditions, to complement the tests being performed on the test circuit. The LTA-NTU agreement will see CETRAN being operated by NTU for a period of five years, during which the latter will collaborate with various international testing, inspection and certification bodies, research institutions and industry partners on global standards and test requirements. These include BMW Group, TÜV SÜD, TNO and TUM CREATE – a joint research collaboration between NTU and the Technical University of Munich.
Image above: NTU Singapore
August 9, 2016
