One of HEADSTART’s objectives has been to involve the testing, validation and certification expert community in Europe and internationally to steer and validate iteratively the project progress. The HEADSTART Expert Network, led by ERTICO – ITS Europe, is the platform used to facilitate the interaction with these stakeholders for the promotion of the HEADSTART methodology, as well as to identify and reach consensus on gaps and new requirements for testing and validation of CAD functions and their enabling technologies, for maintaining HEADSTART methodology and thus enhancing its interoperability.

The HEADSTART Expert Network consists of three main entities:

  1. The experts providing expertise at a technical and strategic level on issues such as e.g. positioning, communications, scenario selection, cyber-security; from within the project consortium as well as external stakeholders from industry, vehicle manufacturers, road infrastructure providers, telecom providers and operators, research organisations, policy makers, public authorities, related clusters, R&D hubs, standardisation bodies, innovative SMEs from across Europe as well as globally;
  2. Other projects funded under the same call topic as well as other related projects for mutual information sharing, the development of common initiatives and/ or advanced cooperation: e.g. ICT4CART, SAM, MOOVE, SHOW, ENSEMBLE, L3Pilot, 5G-CARMEN, VVMethods, SetLevel4to5, SaferTEC, SAFE-UP;
  3. Targeted non-European projects, organisations and initiatives with which the project has established bilateral communication or is involved in through its consortium members: e.g. the Trilateral EU-US-Japan Working Group on ART, SAKURA, the SIP-adus framework programme, the ASAM standardisation body, EuroNCAP, CETRAN .

The Network is structured according to six Working Groups corresponding to topics, procedures, tools in the field of CAD testing and its Key Enabling Technologies:

  • Cyber-security
  • Communications (V2X)
  • Positioning
  • Scenario selection
  • Consumer testing (NCAP)
  • Type approval

The Expert Network has been engaged throughout the project through bilateral meetings, workshops of the aforementioned Working Groups, demonstrations, interviews and surveys.

Latest (and final) initiatives in 2021 include a joint White Paper with SAKURA/SIP-adus entitled “Towards the Harmonization of Safety Assessment Methods of Automated Driving”. The paper was presented and discussed in a joint online workshop on safety assurance on 11 November in the frame of the SIP-adus conference. A Series of workshop have also been organised on Positioning aspects in early 2021, on Cybersecurity aspects with FUSACOM in September and lately on Type approval in October focussing in particular on ALKS (Automated Lane Keeping System), national legislation and licence exemption.

The blog post was created by Julie Castermans and Stephane Dreher from ERTICO.

Julie Castermans has a Master degree in translation from the Higher Institute of Translators and Interpreters in Brussels, Belgium. Before joining ERTICO in 2005, she worked on EC funded programmes at AGRER Consultancy, supporting the preparation of tenders’ for EuropeAid programmes in agriculture and rural development. She has 10 years of experience in the coordination and implementation of EC-funded research projects in the field of ITS, as well as in the communication and exploitation Julie is Belgian and she speaks French, English, Dutch, Spanish and some Swedish.

Stéphane holds a PhD in Geophysics from University of Brest, France. Before joining ERTICO in April 2018, he worked as Transport Data and Statistics Expert at United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He advised the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Transport on technical and policy matters regarding Transport data and Analytics, ITS and e-government in the frame of the implementation of the National Transformation Program 2020. Prior to that, he worked 10 years at HERE (an ERTICO Partner) where he was Team Leader responsible for EU Government Programmes. A French national, Stéphane also speaks German, English and Portuguese.