ESCAPE, the self-driving paradigm, chalks up its first major milestone

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) has recently announced that ESCAPE (European Safety Critical Applications Positioning Engine), Europe’s self-driving response, has completed the preliminary design of its ESCAPE GNSS Engine (EGE).

EGE is an innovative positioning engine that leverages the Galileo signal to provide a critical positioning component in autonomous vehicles. The positioning capability of the EGE is based on a complex algorithm produced by the GNSS sensor, including several positioning levels to achieve maximum possible accuracy.

ESCAPE pools some of Europe’s top research and industrial institutions. Primed by the Spanish company FICOSA, the project is backed by the collaboration of partners from the whole of Europe, all of them key stakeholders in the domain of safety-critical applications for road transportation: GMV from Spain, RENAULT and IFSTTAR from France, STMicroelectronics and Italy’s Istituto Superiore Mario Boella.

GMV boasts an important technical role in the ESCAPE project.  As well as responsibility for technical management of the project, within the development of the EGE positioning engine (ESCAPE GNSS Engine), GMV is also furnishing the algorithms that will process the readings of the vehicle sensors, the cameras and GNSS receiver to provide the positioning service together with the integrity required by the connected autonomous vehicle. It will also be providing the intermediate data-fusion layer software, in charge of binding all the communication components together into a synchronized, well-oiled system.

ESCAPE will set up a new paradigm within road-vehicle automation technology, following the vision of companies that have joined the project.

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