The STARS (Satellite Technology for Advanced Railway Signalling) project kicked off on Tuesday, 23 February, in Prague. The event gathered around 40 participants, including project consortium members, universities, stakeholders from the rail sector as well as from the aerospace industry.
Philippe Citroën, UNIFE Director General, welcomed the participants and emphasized the importance of the program for the rail satellite positioning research: “STARS needs to be seen as the lighthouse project of the SHIFT2RAIL for which it will bring the key inputs. “
Carlo des Dorides, the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) Executive Director, stressed the important role of the project: “the GSA is dedicated to make sure ensuring that the rail segment sector is taking on board the added value of the European GNSS technology and STARS is the project that will provide this essential input, enabling the future European Train Control System to benefit from the European satellite positioning”
After a first session open for all stakeholders, the consortium members met to officially start the preparation of this major project.
The STARS project, funded by the European GNSS Agency under the Horizon 2020 program, aims to bridge the gap between ERTMS needs for safety critical applications and GNSS services through a characterisation of the railway environment and of the GNSS performance assessment in that environment. The key objectives of the project are to develop a universal approach to predict the achievable GNSS performances for railway applications and to quantify the economic benefits through reduction of cost, which will increase market appeal of ERTMS.
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