March 29, 2021
OTIV, the Ghent based autonomous railway vehicle start-up, today announces a partnership with Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), one of the most innovative railway operators in Europe. Based on its expertise in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), OTIV supports NS in its experimentation towards a system that can detect and recognize objects in a rail environment.
The European Commission has named 2021 the European Year of Rail, with the objective to encourage the use of rail by both citizens and businesses. Increasing the modal share of rail cuts the greenhouse gas emissions and pollution coming from EU transport significantly, and thereby contributes to the EU Green Deal goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2050.
“Intelligent driver assistance and – in a second stage – autonomous driving solutions enable public and private railway operators to increase safety and efficiency, thereby further contributing to the attractiveness of rail as a transport mode”, Niels Van Damme and Sam De Smet, co-founders at OTIV, explain.
In the new partnership, OTIV and NS are jointly testing features related to intelligent obstacle detection. The intelligent system uses sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms, which support the driver in navigating the complex environments by avoiding incidents such as collisions. In a first phase the tests focus on object recognition and depth perception. The tests are carried out with an NS sprinter train (“SGM”) equipped with the OTIV sensor suite consisting of camera, radar and lidar and take place at an NS yard. The project started in January and runs until mid-April.
