The toll road Moscow-Petersburg has a digital double so that there are more unmanned cars

2024: The toll road Moscow-Petersburg has a digital double so that there are more unmanned cars

The paid route of the Neva M-11 between Moscow and St. Petersburg, along which unmanned trucks without people in the cockpit drove in September 2024, received a digital twin, which will significantly increase the number of unmanned vehicles on this route. The digital twin created by the Telematics concern will ensure control over the movement of unmanned vehicles and their safe operation along the entire length of the highway.

According to the concern, the digital twin is an exact copy of the entire road infrastructure and is integrated with the V2X (vehicle-to-everything) system, which allows cars and the road to exchange information in real time. This ensures the uninterrupted exchange of data on the road situation, weather conditions and other dynamic changes, which contributes to improving the speed and safety of self-driving cars.

source = Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation

As noted by Dmitry Kazarinov, General Director of SoftTelematics, the introduction of a digital twin on the M-11 highway will fully automate the movement of unmanned trucks and other types of transport, without requiring constant control from the driver. He also added that the expansion of the use of digital twins is already planned for the Central Ring Road (TsKAD) and the Vostok M-12 route.

The digital twin of M-11 is part of the large-scale project "Unmanned logistics corridors," aimed at creating a single network of highways for unmanned vehicles. As part of this project, by 2030 it is planned to build more than 20 thousand km of highways equipped with high-precision infrastructure for automated traffic. According to representatives of Telematics, this will significantly reduce the number of road accidents and increase Russia's share in international cargo transportation.

2023

Opening unmanned vehicles on the M-11 using a digital highway twin

On June 14, 2023, Concern Telematics announced that a high-precision digital twin of the section of the Neva M-11 highway was launched in the Leningrad Region during the start of the movement of unmanned trucks. This is the first digital high-precision model of the expressway in Russia, containing not only a three-dimensional digital map of the road, but also dynamic real-time traffic data. Such a digital twin will ensure the safe movement of unmanned and connected vehicles by timely informing about changes on the path of movement tens of kilometers forward.

Digital twin M-11

As reported, the first Russian digital twin of the highway is an initiative of the Russian Ministry of Transport within the framework of the Unmanned Logistics Corridors project. It is created by FAU ROSDORNII and SoftTelematics (part of the Telematics concern) based on the V2X communication technology (vehicle-to-everything - a car connected to everything) to ensure the safe movement of highly automated vehicles (VATS) on highways.

The digital twin of the M-11 expressway is a digital map of the highway, road infrastructure and a V2X platform for interacting with autonomous transport. It contains a control center that combines colossal amounts of road data and reflects changes in the road situation in real time. For this, the digital twin is connected to the existing intelligent road system - an automated traffic control system. This makes it possible to supplement the VATS management system with actual data from the road infrastructure on traffic, weather conditions, road accidents, any dynamic changes and incidents throughout tracks. In turn, smart road infrastructure receives data on the movement of unmanned and connected vehicles, ensuring effective coordination and management of traffic flows on the highway.

Digital twin M-11

The first section was launched on June 14, 2023 and by the end of 2023 a digital twin of the entire route with a total length of 610 km will be gradually created. Such a dynamic digital road model provides geo-positioning of road infrastructure facilities with decimeter accuracy and is necessary for the safe movement of unmanned vehicles along the route. Also, the created digital twin will help to form standards, set technical and technological requirements for the road transport infrastructure of unmanned logistics corridors. The replicated target architecture will help optimize algorithms for using highly automated tools in real road conditions to launch unmanned roads. told Pavel Ruchyyov, Deputy General Director of FAU ROSDORNII

{{quote 'author
= noted Dmitry Kazarinov, CEO of SoftTelematics|VATS receive information about the surrounding road situation using  sensors, lidars and video cameras, the range of which is limited by the physical visibility zone. Use of a V2X-based digital twin with unmanned vehicles real data from the "smart" road will make it possible to see events outside the boundaries of the car's sensor systems.}}

Contract for the creation of a digital twin of the high-speed track M-11

In April 2023, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation signed a contract for the creation of a digital twin on the Neva M-11 highway to ensure the safe movement of highly automated vehicles. The project worth 300 million rubles will be implemented by the federal autonomous institution "Russian Road Research Institute."

The contractor must carry out work in four stages by the end of 2023. The first will end according to the plan on June 20 (it is estimated at 15 million rubles), the second - July 20 (98 million rubles), the third - September 19 (136.8 million rubles), the fourth - December 31 (50.2 million rubles). As a result, the contractor must develop and configure software for the demonstration layout of the digital M-11 twin, deploy it on equipment in the data center and perform commissioning and integration work.

The Ministry of Transport signed a contract for the creation of a digital double of the M-11 highway

The main goals of creating a digital twin of the highway in the Ministry of Transport were named:

• testing services for road infrastructure, as well as VATS, support for automotive services based on V2X communication technologies;
• creation of a target architecture of a technical solution based on V2X technologies, ready for replication;
• Creating a V2X-based service interaction model
• checking the proposed requirements for road transport infrastructure to ensure the safe movement of the VATS.

The created digital twin should M-11 consist of:

• Service V2X platform
• digital card;
• automotive on-board equipment installed in vehicles used for testing;
• a specialized mobile application;
• control center.

The competition was announced in mid-March 2023. At the end of the term for participation in the purchase, only one application was submitted. Since the application met the requirements, a contract was concluded with this organization, follows from the documents on the public procurement website.^[1]

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