ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP) concept of smart transportation. Photo: ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) signed an agreement this week with Europe’s intelligent transportation system organization ERTICO to explore how space-based technologies can support future smart road systems such as autonomous vehicles. 

EERTICO, the European Road Transport Telematics Implementation Coordination, is a public-private partnership with a roadmap to reduce human error-caused accidents through technology such as collision avoidance, lane departure warnings, and traffic flow regulation. ESA announced the memorandum of intent with the group on Aug. 23.

ERTICO will collaborate with ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, NAVISP. The program involves many of the Galileo satnav engineers and is exploring ways to improve satellite navigation, alternative positioning systems, and new navigation services and applications. The collaboration is intended to support the development and commercialization of future sustainable technologies in the transport and mobility sector.

“Because ERTICO bridges so many different actors – service providers, transport companies, research institutions, universities, public authorities and the connectivity industry as well as vehicle manufacturers – this cooperation opens up a huge number of unique starting points for future research, bringing our work closer to the market and increasing opportunities for commercialization of space-based applications,” commented Rafael Lucas, head of NAVISP’s technical program office.