The Eurecat technology centre is coordinating the European FlexCrash project which has developed an online platform for simulating mixed traffic scenarios with autonomous and human-driven vehicles in real time to help identify critical situations and improve road safety.
The FlexCrash platform enables interaction between human drivers and autonomous vehicles in realistic simulations and provides insight into how these vehicles interact in varied and complex traffic environments. This allows developers, regulators and mobility experts to identify potential safety issues and optimise the performance of future autonomous vehicles and their inclusion in road traffic.
Current approaches to traffic testing with autonomous vehicles are primarily based on simulations, yet existing tools often fail to take into account the complexity of mixed traffic scenarios. FlexCrash allows the simultaneous integration of multiple autonomous vehicles and human drivers in the same simulation environment.
The platform has been designed and developed by IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences and uses a turn-based strategic game paradigm which simplifies the simulation process and reduces cognitive load on users. It also ensures that simulations can continue even with network interruptions or delays.
“As the use of autonomous vehicles grows and seeing them on the streets becomes increasingly common, understanding these interactions will be crucial to improving road safety and optimising traffic systems,” says Sergi Parareda, technical coordinator of the project and a researcher at Eurecat’s Metal and Ceramic Materials Unit.
The platform’s key features include creating and monitoring mixed traffic scenarios, sampling vehicle trajectories and analysing how these scenarios evolve over time. Users can design custom scenarios, track them in real time and evaluate vehicle behaviour to improve both autonomous and human driving strategies.
The platform ensures that each simulation ends under specific conditions such as reaching the maximum duration or when all vehicles have achieved their objectives or been involved in an accident.
It also includes an innovative mediated trajectory sampling feature which allows human drivers to plan their trajectories interactively without having to be proficient in complex kinematic calculations.
“Instead of relying solely on past accidents, the FlexCrash platform will generate realistic traffic scenarios based on actual driver behaviour which will help identify critical situations and accidents not included in existing databases,” notes Montserrat Vilaseca, director of Eurecat’s Metal and Ceramic Materials Unit. The FlexCrash research team is to improve the platform’s performance and scalability in future upgrades.
Aside from simulation, Eurecat is also coordinating another part of the FlexCrash project to make vehicles safer and more sustainable in crashes through advanced crash-tolerant structures. The project seeks to develop safer, lighter and more circular structures made of high-strength green aluminium alloys. This approach not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions but also significantly improves impact resistance, especially in frontal crashes which account for 70 per cent of all vehicle collisions.
The FlexCrash project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and its consortium is made up of eleven partners from Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia and Austria. It includes four research and technology centres (Eurecat, the Stellantis CRF research centre, Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH and Fraunhofer IWS), two universities (Luleå Tekniska Universitet and IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences), three industrial partners (Gestamp, Gemmate Technologies, Aerobase Innovations and Hidria) and a standardisation body (UNE – the Spanish Association for Standardisation).
