BERTHA Co-Organises SPADE Workshop to Advance Human-Centric Autonomous Driving
On June 22, 2025, the SPADE Workshop – Secure, Privacy-Aware Naturalistic Driving Data for Future Mobility – was held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, as part of the 36th IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV 2025). The event brought together leading researchers and innovators to explore the ethical, technical, and societal dimensions of intelligent mobility systems.
A key highlight of the workshop was the co-organisation by the BERTHA project, a Horizon Europe initiative focused on developing scalable, probabilistic Driver Behavioural Models (DBMs) to enhance the safety and human-likeness of autonomous vehicles.
BERTHA’s Leadership and Scientific Contributions
The workshop was co-chaired by two prominent BERTHA partners: Prof. Dr. Antonio Manuel López Peña (Computer Vision Center, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Dr. Jason Rambach (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence – DFKI). Their leadership was instrumental in shaping the workshop’s agenda and ensuring a strong alignment with BERTHA’s mission.
Dr. Jason opened the scientific programme with a keynote on “Modelling Human Driver Perception: Challenges and Opportunities”, offering insights from his work at DFKI. Prof. Dr. Antonio followed with a presentation on “Vision-based End-to-End Driving by Imitation Learning”, showcasing cutting-edge research from the Computer Vision Center.
A Platform for Collaboration and Innovation
The SPADE Workshop featured a full-day programme of invited talks and peer-reviewed papers, covering topics such as driver monitoring, assistive mobility, scalable data collection, and privacy-aware frameworks. These themes resonate strongly with BERTHA’s objectives and ongoing research.
By co-organising the workshop and contributing to its scientific content, BERTHA project reaffirmed its commitment to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing the development of ethical, human-centred autonomous driving technologies.
For more information and access to the full programme, visit the official SPADE Workshop page.