Shift2Rail TAURO: Technologies for the Autonomous Rail Operation

Rail automation beyond existing automatic metros and people movers will attract investments in the next years to start with its wide deployment in mainline and in other applications such as marshalling yards, depots or urban rail (tramways). The Shift2Rail project “Technologies for the Autonomous Rail Operation” (TAURO) intends to explore, analyze and propose cutting-edge technologies required to make autonomous rail transport a reality. Such technologies would enable certifiable safe environment perception, remote driving and command, automated monitoring, testing and diagnostics and a seamless migration from existing legacy systems. All in all, automation of rail assets can directly and significantly contribute to at least two of the European Commission's priorities for the period 2019-2024: The European Green Deal (fighting climate change) and the Europe fit for the digital age (digital technologies including artificial intelligence). This paper presents the objectives, structure, methodology and expected results from the project. Its consortium, composed of 16 leading companies of the European rail sector, have divided the activities into four work streams lasting until 2023 to cover all said challenges. Hence, TAURO should be understood as a bridging project between Shift2Rail and its successor, Europe's Rail, whose first projects will be starting by the end of 2022.