Autonomous, personalised organisation of road transport and digital logistics

 

Purpose of research:

We are already in the middle of an age of digitalisation and more flexible traffic and are moving more and more towards autonomous driving. For this change to be a success, new urban mobility concepts must be developed that integrate the new digital services into urban life.
This project is dedicated to the development of an optimised fully autonomous transport system that takes into account the individual needs of citizens on the basis of new cloud and communication technologies.

Objectives:

Implementation, testing and validation ...
- a holistic approach to optimised autonomous transport.
- with the provision of suitable mobility services for individual passenger and freight transport.
- taking into account individual citizens' needs and optimisation with regard to public acceptance.

Procedure:

In order to keep the generally prevailing scepticism toward new technologies among the population as low as possible, the project involves the citizens in the transformation process from the outset. The developed mobility solutions will be integrated in the early stages of the project and optimized in iterative loops. As consortium partner, the city of Aachen will provide selected routes on the Ring, the Campus Boulevard and the market for the test phase.
The consortium will use the electric vehicles developed by Aachen Spin-Off e.GO for this project. These are to be connected to a cloud infrastructure through consistent networking. Each vehicle can drive autonomously and drive to the destinations of the routes planned by the Fusion Center independently. Within the framework of this project, algorithms for autonomous driving will be implemented in the e.GO. For synergy reasons, this will be done in cooperation with the BMBF project PARIS, which is also located at the RWTH.

Project approach:

We do not only concentrate on the transport of people, but also consider the transport concept holistically and include goods and commodities in the transport idea. This goal is achieved through globally optimized services provided via a mobility cloud. Every citizen has the opportunity to choose between different services and thus determine the price. For example, a businessman can use a transporter alone if he wants to use the commuting time for office work. In addition to making urban transport more flexible, our concept can also improve mobility for rural areas close to cities in the medium term.
A possible key technology in this context is an optimized and highly flexible fully autonomous transport system tailored to the needs of citizens, which completely changes life in the city and between city and country through new mobility opportunities. If citizens can get into an autonomously driving vehicle at any time, their own car is no longer necessary. The daily driving time can also be freely used for work in an autonomously driving and networked vehicle. In addition, goods and merchandise can be transported simultaneously to rural regions.