ABSOLUT II is pushing forward developments in autonomous driving

Consortium presents first functional demonstrators at milestone meeting in front of project funding organization and Federal Ministry in Leipzig.

As part of the milestone meeting of the ABSOLUT II research and development project, the first subsystems of the overall solutions for remote access to a control center and an on-demand platform for autonomous public transport vehicles were presented in a test-ready state. At a total of eight stations, the representatives of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the project funding organization were able to see for themselves the functional demonstrations of the project progress achieved as planned. The current milestone is of particular importance, as this was the first time that system components realized during the course of the project were demonstrated in practice, giving a real impression of the functions of the future overall solution.

With the achieved partial results, the project is now entering the final straight, where the individual components are to be combined into complete technology demonstrators for remote vehicle access and booking platforms for the operation of autonomous public transport fleets by the end of 2026. This will implement two further essential building blocks for the practical roll-out of driverless public transport systems, as only with remote vehicle access from a central monitoring instance will it be possible to expand the personnel key from the previous one worker for each individual vehicle to several vehicles and significantly increase the cost efficiency of the overall system for the first time.

“For the industry and our city, Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe has played a key role in pushing forward developments in autonomous driving in public transport. Now, together with our partners, we are addressing the final technological challenges. The industry is ready for the next leap in productivity. The subsequent industrial implementation should now be the focus of politics and funding projects,” says Ulf Middelberg, CEO of Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe.

The joint project is also receiving support from the federal government in particular. On the one hand, the federal law on autonomous driving, which was already passed in 2021, is one of the world's most modern laws in this area, as it already enables autonomous driving in road traffic without the need for a driver to be present. At the same time, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection has been supporting the development and testing of this important future technology, especially in public transport, for many years with its “ICT for electromobility” program.

Christian Liebich, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, summarizes: “Today's milestone meeting has shown that the ABSOLUT project is fully on track at around the halfway point of its duration. I am confident that ABSOLUT II will bring us a big step closer to the vision of autonomous driving. And this project will make an important contribution to the objective set out in the new government coalition agreement, which states that we want to make autonomous driving a regular part of regular operations.