FRONTIER project introduces ANTME, its new online platform to streamline EU traffic

Urban traffic in the EU is expected to get worse in coming years, particularly since 80% of Europe's population will live in cities by 2050. Road congestion also causes up to 40% longer commutes for EU citizens and burdens their pockets with unnecessary costs, especially in terms of additional fuel and lost time on the road. In parallel, transportation currently causes as much as 25% of EU greenhouse gas emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Yet there are efforts to effectively address these traffic challenges. One of these is the EU-funded FRONTIER project, which developed a platform to streamline communication among transport stakeholders, ease traffic congestion and facilitate decision-making in traffic management. Known as the Autonomous Network and Traffic Management Engine (ANTME), the smart collaborative platform is revolutionising traffic control by addressing traffic incidents – such as roadworks or collisions – across different modes of transport.

In this vein, ANTME is empowering transport operators to better predict traffic points, detect road issues and generate response plans by offering improved situational awareness of traffic, enhanced coordination across transportation modes and real-time traffic analysis. These technological advances are capable of recommending action plans and providing immediate solutions that help traffic managers and operators overcome traffic issues.

This is being supported by visual dashboards for operators in traffic control rooms, a mobile app to update travellers and commuters regarding traffic issues, a response plan generator and intelligent services that predict traffic and detect incidents. ANTME’s advanced interfaces and features, powered by maps and related data, immediately communicate an enhanced picture of traffic status to involved stakeholders.

Viability demonstrated through several project pilots

The developed platform has already led to better and faster transport stakeholder communication and data exchange, thanks to several pilot projects around Europe, namely in Belgium, Greece and the UK.

In Oxfordshire, UK, transport stakeholders along the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) corridor in the region are concluding two pilot projects that have successfully utilised ANTME. The first of the two pilots integrates Connected and Autonomous Vehicles into traffic management and control systems by sending updates to the vehicles on events or incidents that will affect their routing. The second pilot helps commuters avoid incidents or events that may affect their journey to work, providing simulations and response plans that minimise disruptions arising from roadworks, severe weather or collisions.

On the southern side of the European continent, a pilot in Athens, Greece is utilising the ANTME platform for the Attiki Odos peripheral highway around Athens, so as to advance multimodal traffic management to improve cooperation among different transport operators. The platform provides response plans and minimises response time to traffic events, resulting in reduced travel times and more resilient transport networks.

Transport through waterways is also benefitting from FRONTIER’s successful pilots. Specifically, a pilot demonstration in Antwerp, Belgium showed improvements in the transport network’s resilience by coordinating traffic between road and waterway transport to improve supply chains and freight logistics. By analysing real-time forecasts, it presents transportation scenarios for freight transport and associated costs. Through the ANTME platform, transport operators can access crucial information such as barge operators and inland terminals to streamline road and waterway traffic.

The project pilots have already demonstrated ANTME’s success in improving traffic congestion, leading to benefits such as reduced emissions, fewer collisions and fewer disruptions for travellers and commuters.

Integrated multimodal network and traffic management is playing an increasingly important role in overcoming transport-related risks and challenges, now more than ever, ensuring ongoing efficiency and resilience of Europe’s transport systems. FRONTIER’s ANTME platform will form part of the solution in alleviating traffic congestion and related challenges.

Find more information about the FRONTIER’s ANTME platform at the dedicated project’s Factsheet, which can be downloaded following this link.

About FRONTIER

The EU-funded FRONTIER project, which was launched on 1 May 2021, brings together 19 high-profile partners from all over Europe to empower a seamless transition to a new era in transport management. Different cutting-edge systems and solutions are being leveraged to create the ultimate integrated network and traffic management systems, that will favour driverless automation, seamless transfer among different modes of transport, better collaboration among different stakeholders, reduction of accidents and transport emissions, in this way contributing to better standard of living to Europe's citizens.

FRONTIER actively collaborated with the CIVITAS HARMONY project, with FRONTIER preliminary results being featured in the Poster Session during the HARMONY project Final Conference, which took place on 24 February, 2023 in Barcelona. Also worth mentioning is the fact that a freight controller for operational level simulation developed in HARMONY was further exploited in FRONTIER. Collaboration with HARMONY was deepened through the participation of both projects in the AutoMATE Cluster. The AutoMATE Cluster was formed based on commonalities of the work of the six Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe automated mobility projects (FRONTIER, SHOW, SPROUT, PASCAL, HARMONY and ULTIMO (earlier: AVENUE)), comprising the cluster in the field of Automated and Integrated Transport. The Cluster aimed to revolutionise urban mobility by making transport smarter, greener and more integrated thanks to connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). The projects organised activities together including joint sessions in major Transport events and participation in projects’ own events. Supported by the European Commission’s Horizon Results Booster programme, the cluster has issued joint communication material.

Find more about FRONTIER at https://www.frontier-project.eu

Author: Dariya Rublova

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