I am glad and thrilled to share with you all that CTTC will coordinate 5G-CroCo, a new innovation action (project) partially funded by the European Commission (EC) under the highly competitive Horizon 2020 program. The project aims at trialing and validating 5G technologies for cooperative, connected and autonomous mobility (CCAM). In particular, I will personally act as Project Coordinator, which makes me feel particularly excited and honored. In addition, I will count with both a great team at CTTC to help us drive this project to success, and with an amazing consortium, gathering experts and professionals in the intersection of both the telco and the automotive domains. Great years to come ahead!
We are now preparing the contract with the EC, and the project is planned to start on the 1stNovember 2018. The project will have a total cost of close to 17 million euro. In 5G-CroCo, we will trial 5G technologies for CCAM with particular emphasis on situations where the vehicles traverse the borders of various countries, ensuring continuous connectivity and required quality provision. Technologies such as mobile edge computing, network slicing, predictive Quality of Service (QoS), smart positioning, or 5G NR (new radio) will be validated in a challenging cross-border, cross-vendor, cross-OEM (original equipment manufacturer), and cross-operator scenario, making sure that the concept of a fully cooperative, connected and autonomous mobility paradigm is feasible and viable in the very near future. The project will not only address the technical validation of 5G for CCAM, but will also dive into the cost/benefit analysis and the design of innovative business models which can emerge from the availability of such an impressive technology.
5G-Croco will run for 3 years, starting 1stNovember 2018, and ending in October 2021. Along all this time, a big consortium formed by 24 leading telco and automotive companies (both car manufacturers and tier-1 suppliers), road operators, mobile network operators (MNOs), SMEs, and academia, representing 7 European countries (Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece, and Sweden), will trial 5G technologies for the service of autonomous and connected driving. Along the next weeks, we will disclose more information about the project: detailed list of partners, specific use cases that will be validated, and time plan for the project.
5G-Croco is one of the three projects that have been selected for funding in call ICT-18 of the current Work Program of the Horizon 2020 framework. These three projects are part of Phase III of the 5G-PPP, and will run in coordination to make sure that all projects running under the 5G-PPP umbrella yield a high and coordinated impact for both Europe, and worldwide, in all domains: technology, standardization, knowledge, economy, and society.
More detailed information to come in the next weeks! Stay tuned!
Best,
Jesus
Jesus Alonso-Zarate 