The aim of the ESPLANADE project is to create a common methodology to assess the safety of different systems, functions and scenarios to do with autonomous vehicles. Without this kind of methodology, no autonomous vehicles will be allowed out into ordinary traffic.

Proving safety is one of the big challenges facing self-driving vehicles. Our work in ESPLANADE, in partnership with academia and leading experts, means we can create the necessary methods to offer safe self-driving cars to our customers.

—Jonas Nilsson, responsible for the functional-safety of self-driving cars at Volvo Cars

The ESPLANADE project builds on insights and questions from successful research project FUSE (FUnctional Safety and Evolvable architectures for autonomy), which resulted in greater insights into the industrial challenges in the field, as well as a number of scientific articles. The ambition behind ESPLANADE is to continue to push research forwards in this highly critical and internationally recognized area.

FUSE and ESPLANADE are co-funded by Sweden’s innovation agency VINNOVA. The ESPLANADE project will run for three years, from 2017 to 2019. The project’s total budget is SEK 31 million (US$3.5 million). The project is managed by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden (previously SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden). Participants are: Volvo Cars, Volvo GTT, Semcon, Systemite, Autoliv, Qamcom, KTH, Comentor and Delphi.