Electronic Horizons in Roadside Infrastructure using Digital Twins

Traffic system infrastructure consist of many components such as traffic signs, traffic light systems and lighting, which are increasingly penetrated by active sensors and actuators, some of which are very complex. Like many other areas such as factory automation, trade or private homes, they are subject to a constant digitalization. For traffic systems digitalization must particularly consider their spatial extent and their status as critical infrastructure of our society.

This project aims at researching suitable digital representations and processing concepts for intelligent traffic systems (ITS) for its core functionality of traffic control (signaling systems, traffic signs, etc.) and safe use of the roads (lighting, sensors for ice hazard, etc.). Digitalization of ITS will offer advantages for the operation and management, but will become even more important with the advent of automated vehicles, as it is expected that these vehicles can be supported significantly by the infrastructure to efficiently handle complex situations.

To achieve this, the concept of electronic horizons in ITS will be explored. Electronic horizons allow to perceive the environment beyond the range of a system's own sensors. For example, by retrieving sensor data inside a crossing road, an automated vehicle can obtain information about cross traffic that cannot be captured by its own sensors.

In the approach we have chosen, Digital Twins map the parts of the traffic system infrastructure as virtualized units. These digital twins enable a comprehensive data exchange, describe the behavior of the components represented by them, but can also take over functionalities, that cannot be provided at the real system components at all or with considerable greater effort. Advantages arise, since communication- and computational-intensive processes can be efficiently carried out, independent of the hardware resources on site or interoperability can be more easily established. Research focuses on IoT communication such as LoRa and on virtual dataspaces to use the information of digital twins to create electronic horizons.

**This project is partially co-funded by the European Commission under the European Regional Development Fund (www.efre.gv.at) according to article 4 ERDF and the county of Lower Austria (www.noe.gv.at).