Automated Driving in Production (ADP): Concept, Implementation and Further Potentials

In this paper, we are discussing and presenting the concept of automated driving in production facilities. All activities are carried out within the publicly funded project E-Self with the project partners Ford, Kopernikus and the Institute of Automotive Engineering of the Technical University Braunschweig. The central aim of the project is the development and integration of automated driving at the end-of-line in the production at Ford Motor Company's manufacturing plant in Cologne. The driving function thereby is mostly based upon automated valet driving with an infrastructure-based perception and action planning. Especially for electric vehicles the state of charge of the battery is critical, since energy is needed for all testing and driving operations at end-of-line. Within this paper, we want to introduce the general concept of automated driving in production, the implementation possibilities and implementation in the scope of the project as well as discuss further potentials of this technology.