Integration of C-ITS in Autonomous Driving

Cooperative, Connected and Autonomous (CCAD) is clearly the next step in the development of autonomous vehicles, solving much of the technological limitations that the autonomous vehicles suffer today. This development of the CCAD can be considered as an extension of Cooperative Systems (C-ITS) to the field of autonomous vehicles. However, the C-ITS were basically developed as means to provide warnings and recommendations to drivers, in order to improve their level of safety and efficiency based on the information provided by the V2X communications systems. Therefore, an adaptation is necessary, both cooperative systems and autonomous vehicles so that they can use the available awareness information. In this paper we present the results of the European project AUTOCITS, where a deployment of cooperative systems focused on Traffic Management Centers (TMC) has been carried out. The information provided by these TMCs is sent to the vehicles that circulate on the deployed roads through V2X, generating warnings on variable information panels in the case of unconnected vehicles, directly to drivers in the case of connected vehicles and to the vehicle itself in the case of autonomous and connected vehicles. Specifically, in this paper is presented the response of an autonomous vehicle to the speed reduction due to adverse weather conditions warnings generated from the TMC of the Spanish Traffic Agency (DGT).