September 2020: 2nd Annual Technical Review meeting (23-24 / 9 / 2020)
The 2nd Annual Technical Review meeting with the European Commission and two external evaluators took place in an unusual setting: over 100 participants joined the 2-day meeting from all over Europe via virtual TEAMS connection.
For the most part the consortium had positive news to report, despite the challenges that the COVID19 pandemic has imposed on the project. All technical deliverables due in the second year were achieved and significant progress has been made. This was shown in 46 individual recordings of demonstrations and prototypes which each focussed on mitigating parts of the Use Case threats that were defined in deliverables D1.7 and D2.1. Thus far, the results have been very encouraging. In fact, in a number of cases the technology integration which is foreseen for year 3, is already underway. This is good news considering that SECREDAS’ final year is all about HW/SW integration between consortium partners and the subsequent live ‘on-the-road’ demonstration cycles using combinations of automated vehicles and drones (acting as automated vehicles) which will take place in Helmond (Netherlands), Modena (Italy), Madrid (Spain) and Lisbon (Portugal). An overview of the achieved YR2 results is shown in this presentation:
EFECs Progress Overview Presentation – Year 2
During the meeting, we discussed the main technical challenge of physically bringing different stand-alone technologies together for the purpose of further integration. Staff from partner organisations cannot meet due to the current travel restrictions throughout Europe. Virtual meetings can only go so far. It was explained to the Commission and the evaluators that integration planning is constantly being adapted, but that there is a chance that the project may need an extension beyond its current 3-year planning to complete the demonstration programme.
Another issue that was discussed, concerns the dissemination & exploitation actions that have been planned for the 2nd and 3rd year. Where the production of high-quality publications were on track and several patents have been files/approved, most of the planned exploitation actions involved physical presence at conferences and fairs. COVID19 made most of these actions during YR2 obsolete and the consortium have had to rethink its approach. This means that the planned stakeholder forum and the large survey of end-user expectations did not take place. They will be moved to the project’s final year of activity. The reviewers were also told that SECREDAS is working with the EU-funded RESULTS BOOSTER Programme and the CYBERWATCHING.EU Programme to redefine the exploitation strategy and to work closely with other projects in the cybersecurity domain to create a number of interesting webinars.
In all, the consortium conveyed the message that the project is in good shape to increase trust of end-users in the secure and safe functioning of today’s connected and tomorrow’s automated vehicles and that their privacy when using such vehicles is well guarded.
Note: public technical deliverables created during YR2 will be posted on this website as soon as they have been formally approved following the Annual Review process. This is expected to be at the end of November 2020.
November 2019: EFECS conference Helsinki & first SECREDAS stakeholder meeting
The EFECS conference in Helsinki was used to build up closer ties to several other ECSEL projects and to establish closer collaboration with the Lighthouse Mobility.E initiative. We also organised our first stakeholder session to collect input what the major Security and Privacy concerns are from both users and developers of high-tech automated systems as they become more and more interconnected. The key-note speaker was Gerard Doll, the director of vehicle regulation and admission for the RDW (The Dutch Vehicle Authority). The interactive workshop collected concerns from different stakeholders such as certification bodies, governments, end-users, manufacturers, tier-1 suppliers and discussed directions for future solutions. The results feed directly into the work done by the different work packages.