For the known reasons and without using the C-word, the physical Project Partner Meeting planned for the beautiful city of Aalborg in Denmark took place online in October. So unfortunately, the consortium was not able to visit the first running self-driving bus in Denmark at all, but the Aalborg Municipality organized a very varied and cinematic virtual meeting
Instead of conventional activity update presentations, the partner had to prepare a short video. No limits were imposed on creativity. The effort was also rewarded – at the end of the meeting there was an Oscar ceremony, for which the participants had to vote in different categories. Of course the partners had to dress accordingly. The big buster was actually the lead from Bremen, who successfully brought his newborn daughter into the limelight in the classic stage-mom manner. But other partners also received a well-deserved prize.
Beside the award ceremony, the partners had a productive and interesting exchange. At the plenary session, the focus was on the different national approaches to autonomous vehicles. Each country presented the results from the KPMG Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index and gave their own experiences and thoughts to the developments. At the group session the consortium splited into three thematic groups: Research debate to engage the academic partners, the role of the cities and the Trough of Disillusionment. Afterwards the results of the sessions were presented to all partners and were a good discussion basis. The whole meeting produced some important insights and tasks for the time to come.
ART-Forum hopes to see all partner face-to-face again as soon as possible.