Ideas, services and certifications for smart mobility

The smart mobility of the future has many facets: highly automated and autonomous driving, alternative drives, diverse sharing models, smart cities with intelligently connected multimodal modes of transport, and much more. We are already experiencing some of this on the roads, while for other concepts there are still some challenges to be solved on the way from vision to reality. Existing business models in the mobility sector are also driven or challenged by digitization and artificial intelligence. Last but not least, the question of how to deal with data that makes all this possible hovers over all smart mobility applications.

TÜV Rheinland is actively shaping this exciting environment with its own Future Mobility team - a consistent, state-of-the-art implementation of its long-time experience and industry-leading competence within mobility. The globally active testing and certification organization enables the change worldwide closely working together with OEMs, development service providers and suppliers and is in exchange with regulatory authorities around the globe. The global expert-team for safety, technology and the environment empowers the automotive industry and supports the movers and shakers to enable innovative and holistic solutions in order to make mobility safe, secure and sustainable.

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When talking about the mobility of the future, advanced assistance systems and autonomous functions of levels 3 and 4 are in the focus of public perception as well as on the agenda of many car manufacturers and suppliers. They have to be tested for their function and safety, and their conformity with legal regulations has to be certified. TÜV Rheinland has demonstrated its expertise in this area, for example, in the assessment of a driverless people mover in regular service in Germany. Before that, the organization supported a pilot project of Bosch and Daimler with the assessment of a driverless and fully automated parking system for test operation.

TÜV Rheinland is further expanding its development network for smart mobility systems. At the ZalaZONET ^TM test site near the Hungarian city of Zalaegerszeg, our smart mobility experts are driving research, development, testing and validation of conventional, connected, automated and electric vehicles. The test site provides an infrastructure for testing a vehicle's autonomy and connectivity functions at extreme dynamic limits, including the latest vehicle communications, as well as a Smart City test environment with realistic streets and various building facades. Such an environment is all the more important for future developments, as TÜV Rheinland believes that Level 4 applications cannot be implemented as stand-alone solutions, but only in conjunction with Car2Infrastructure communications. Enabling intelligent mobility and traffic system solutions at European and international level is also one of the tasks. A competence center for approval testing is available for modern technologies such as autonomous driving, DAS/ADAS systems, V2X communication and Automotive Cybersecurity.

The company is also developing smart digital solutions for automated vehicle condition assessment. Today, the documentation and assessment of bodywork damage is increasingly automated with the help of stationary or mobile digital image recognition applications. TÜV Rheinland is taking this to the next level by providing  market-ready and reliably usable applications based on artificial intelligence (AI). The adomea scanner is already successfully in use. In simple terms, this is a “tunnel” in which several tens of thousands of LEDs generate defined and changing light patterns that are reflected from the vehicle surface. 18 high-resolution cameras record a large number of images during the scanning process, which lasts approximately 45 seconds. The adomea scanner evaluates these images using AI and detects even the smallest damage or deviation.

With its adomea scanner, TÜV Rheinland is already one of the world market leaders in the automated assessment of hail damage. The new generation of the device can now also detect much more complex damages and scratches. In addition to the information provided by high-resolution color images, the adomea scanner also calculates surface curvature and reflectivity. All three measurement signals combined show even the smallest changes in the car body surface: Scratches, abrasions, chipping, corrosion, stone chips, rim damage, missing parts and even repainting. This makes the adomea scanner suitable for all applications, where vehicles are transferred. When taking back leased cars, it detects damage that can affect the residual value. In automotive logistics, the exact documentation ensures smooth transfer of risk. TÜV Rheinland and the Jacobs Group are currently even testing the scanner for use in dealerships: In the Group's new Service Factory in Aachen, it checks the exterior of incoming vehicles and records any damage. This also opens up completely new perspectives for rental companies. A usage at their premises could reduce or even eliminate the lengthy inspection when picking up and returning a rental vehicle. 

Already today modern vehicles collect and produce immense amounts of data - the higher their degree of networking, the greater the output. In the digital age, this mobility data is considered to be a coveted, valuable economic asset. The automotive industry wants to offer profitable data services, fleet operators want a continuous flow of data for an efficient management of their vehicle fleets, and service providers, telecommunications companies, sharing services and other players in digital mobility also dream of unlimited access. On the other hand, many users, consumer advocates - and also TÜV Rheinland - believe that data fundamentally belongs to the user. Consequently, the user must give his or her opt-in for every storage and use.

This raises questions: Under which conditions do drivers share the data generated by their connected vehicles? How can storage and disclosure work in compliance with the GDPR? Answers to such questions are provided by a study conducted by the University of St. Gallen in cooperation with TÜV Rheinland. The central result of the study is: If an independent third party is interposed as a data trustee and administrator of access rights and consents, consumer trust and thus their willingness to share data increases significantly. Even more, users are apparently willing to provide more information under these circumstances than without the involvement of a third party. 

For companies, it is therefore not only more efficient and makes sense for data protection reasons to involve a trustee for the administration and, if necessary, processing of vehicle data - ultimately, this pays off in an even broader and validated database. TÜV Rheinland's Trusted Data Service, which implements data protection through technology, shows what this can look like. As a neutral body, the organization obtains the user's opt-in, assigns the non-personal data from a vehicle to the respective driver and processes it - subject to the corresponding purpose-related opt-in - for data-based services in fleet management. The "data for security" swap appears to be a successful model for all parties involved and for various industries: it resolves the conflict of interest surrounding vehicle-generated data and reconciles a high level of data protection for consumers with intensive data use by industry. 

The whitepaper is available for download here (German only).