The first webinar, entirely in Italian, of the OCTO Smart Talks series held on April 23, was a huge success. The interactive style and the trend topics, addressed by Edwin M. Colella CMO of Octo Telematics, Fabio Pressi CEO of Infoblu and through the collaboration of the journalist Alessandro Palumbo, aroused great interest in the public present. Retrace and relive the emotions of our “Smart Talk”
Researcher David Mirynech from Blockchain Research Institute published a white paper regarding how blockchain technology will optimize the deployment of autonomous vehicles (“Autonomous Vehicles and Blockchain, How a Distributed Ledger System could fund the next generation of transportation infrastructure”, See the full report here – https://www.blockchainresearchinstitute.org/ ).
Blockchain’s inherent ability to communicate and issue, trade, and manage value in a secure and reliable way makes it particularly appealing as the foundation for a new revolutionary kind of transportation economy.
While blockchain has a demonstrable impact on tolling systems (by reducing the need for heavy infrastructure), centralized servers and databases, identity, and credit card systems, the researcher highlight that it can also help to increase the profit functions of vehicles.
Chris Ballinger, the CEO of MOBI, said: “Vehicles are now connected, and they are getting smarter. Those two things allow vehicles to participate in the service economy in ways they never could before.”
Owners can lease their own vehicles by utilizing blockchain-based rider identity. As assets, self-driving cars can work constantly, delivering value to owners around the clock with fees based on such factors as time, distance, and weight or value of cargo.
Once in circulation, autonomous vehicles become shared resources for rental, use, and insurance on demand.
Vehicle data could also be amended for lease.
To finance state and federal roadway networks, governments could capture these revenues through instantaneous remittances.
Vehicle owners or operators may one day receive compensation for sharing other basic resources, such as renewable energy and Internet connectivity.
Mobile Open Blockchain Initiative
To understand how multiple stakeholders may benefit and prepare for such technological change, large consortia such as MOBI (Mobile Open Blockchain Initiative) provide examples of how we should approach innovation.
MOBI is replacing siloed and secretive research and development (R&D) with collaboration among technology developers, automotive manufacturers, transportation authorities, and other stakeholders to provide a road map for overcoming barriers to adoption Ledger System
MOBI’s first project aims to develop an identity system, known as a “car passport,” for vehicles that tracks mileage and all relevant data on the blockchain.
With vehicle identity figured out, the author considers that insurance applications that run on the blockchain are also a target for development. With an immutable data feed characterizing a car’s history, insurance providers can apply a dynamic pricing model specific to that vehicle pricing by the perceived riskiness of drivers or their vehicles based on age, gender, make, or model. This model is known as usage-based mobility pricing.
The researcher understands that blockchain could also reduce information asymmetries in used car markets, improve accuracy and verifiability of insurance claims and automate claims processing,
At Consensus 2017, MOBI debuted its blockchain-enabled P2P car lease application. This application allows for consumers to lease the vehicle from a car owner using a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, file storage on IPFS, and a mobile application to lease and control access to the vehicle.3
These applications allow for instantaneous remittance between transacting parties and they are able to do so without the need for payment processors by using logic coded to a smart contract.
In addition, by tokenizing the car’s identity, we could enable private GPS and time-stamped data to the data exchange, immediately allowing for route optimization and capacity modeling for other entities to consume.
The researcher stress that this process is extremely valuable because automobile owners are immediately able to monetize their unused vehicle time to trusted drivers or riders. In preparation for the future of autonomous vehicles, this platform enables users to pay and get mobility on demand.
Communications network latency: Telecommunications is critical. The need for high-frequency data input is spurring the build out of national 5G networks. Demand for blockchains that can support high user volumes is prompting advances in scalability solutions such as state channels, side channels, sharing, and interoperable chains.
While the race to bring autonomous vehicles to market is intensifying, additional 5G network infrastructure is required before these cars experience their highest performance and functionality.
Immutable records versus privacy: In the world of technology, no issue has been more prevalent this year than data privacy.
Rising fears over the security of these data on a growing number of interconnected devices is leading to the enforcement of higher security standards, consumer education, and even further integration of blockchain and connected IoT devices.
Legal and ethical implications: although vehicle manufacturers have accepted liability for accidents caused by software, the author acknowledges that the true legal implications of a future with autonomous vehicles remain unknown. The law will take the necessary time to come up with a proper legal framework. However, considering how quickly this industry is emerging, regulators must keep pace with innovation.
Governments at all levels must prepare for disruption. Despite this progress, we must prepare for the consequences of technological innovation.
Toyota Woven City: this is the name chosen for the prototype city of the future that the Japanese automaker is planning at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan.
It is a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Envisioned as a living laboratory, it will serve as a home for full-time residents and researchers who will be able to test and develop technologies such as robotics, personal mobility, smart homes and artificial intelligence.
“Building a complete city from the ground up, even on a small scale like this, represents a unique chance to develop future technologies, including a digital operating system for the city’s infrastructure. With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test connected artificial intelligent technology… in both the virtual and the physical realms… maximizing its potential,” said Akio Toyoda, president, Toyota Motor Corporation.
The buildings will be made of wood to minimize CO2 emissions, the rooftops will be covered in photovoltaic panels to generate solar power in addition to power generated by hydrogen fuel cells.
The houses will be equipped with the latest home automation technologies to assist with daily living.
As far as the mobility of the city is concerned, there will be three road types: for faster vehicles, for lower speeds and for pedestrians only. These three road types weave together to form an organic grid pattern to help accelerate the testing of autonomy. To move residents through the city, only fully autonomous, zero emission vehicles will be allowed. In addition, Toyota autonomous e-Pallets will be used for transportation and deliveries.
For the design of Woven City, Toyota commissioned the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, founder and creative director of the Bjarke Ingels Group, who designed many high-profile projects (Two World Trade Center in New York and the Lego House in Denmark, the California Google’s Mountain View and London headquarters. “A swarm of different technologies – says Ingels – is beginning to radically change the way we inhabit and live our cities. Connected, autonomous, emission-free and shared mobility solutions are bound to unleash a world of opportunities for new forms of urban life.”
A special thanks to Alba Emanuela Uva
Researchers Zuoxian Gan, Min Yang, Tao Feng and Harry Timmermans published an article on Springer Nature on 2018, regarding the urban mobility patterns.The article provides a up-to-date review on this issue. Here there are some of the key issues.
Smart card data derived from automatic fare collection (AFC) systems of public transit enable us to study resident movement from a macro perspective. The rhythms of traffic generated by different land users differ, reflecting differences in human activity patterns. Thus, an understanding of daily ridership and mobility patterns requires an understanding of the relationship between daily ridership patterns and characteristics of stations and their direct environment.
Unfortunately, few studies have investigated this relationship. Researchers stress that this study aims to propose a framework of identifying urban mobility patterns and urban dynamics from a spatiotemporal perspective and pointing out the linkages between mobility and land cover/land use (LCLU). Relying on 1 month’s transactions data from the AFC system of Nanjing metro, the 110 metro stations are classified into 7 clusters named as employment-oriented stations, residential-oriented stations, spatial mismatched stations, etc., each characterized by a distinct ridership pattern (combining boarding and alighting).
The analytical framework and findings may be beneficial for improving service efficiency of public transportation and urban planning. The authors consider that this study presents one of the first attempts of exploring the relationship between local LCLU and metro ridership patterns, while at the same time analyzing the layout of urban functions in a Chinese city.
The emergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the rise of big data have advanced research on travel behavior, activity mining, mobility flows and mobility regularities Big data with specific time–space information of travelers make it possible to analyze urban mobility from a spatiotemporal perspective. Moreover, the sample size of these datasets also improves the accuracy of the analysis. Big travel data can be divided into GPS devices, taxi trajectories, mobile phone data, smart card data (SCD) and social media data.
In contrast to taxi trajectories and social medial check-in data, the other three types of data have two salient advantages: high spatiotemporal precision and tracking long-term resident movements.
Study area and data collection
Nanjing, the heart of Nanjing Metropolitan, is the capital of Jiangsu Province and one of most important political, economic, and cultural centers in eastern China, known also by its famous historical and cultural richness. It covers a total of 6587.02 square kilometers.
The city represents the typical microcosm of Chinese cities, which are still under rapid population urbanization and urban growth. Its total population increased from 4.7 million in 1985 to 8.27 million in 2016 and the number of urban residents increased to 6.78 million, accounting for 82% increase. For the purpose of analysis, the dataset was first aggregated and converted into hourly records.
There were 21 weekdays, 8 weekends and 1 holiday in April 2015. Researchers focused on people’s travel patterns on weekday and the records of 9 non-weekdays were not considered.
In addition to the metro trip dataset, the researchers also used the land use data of the Nanjing region from the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau (NUPB).
Discussion and conclusions
As the authors of the article explain, the results show that, among these stations, the employment-oriented stations and the mixed mainly employment-oriented stations have the highest ratios of afternoon peak hourly boarding and morning peak hourly alighting. Meanwhile, the residential-oriented stations and the mixed mainly residential- oriented stations have the highest ratios of afternoon peak hourly alighting and morning peak hourly boarding in weekdays.
The results of the multinomial logit model confirm that the spatial distribution of different types of metro stations reflects the spatial distribution of different urban functions. The researchers highlight that the results of the study may have some implications for Nanjing urban design and transit planning.
The implication of this finding may be important for transit operators to work out suitable train schedules to improve service efficiency. Moreover, these results may especially be useful for daily arrangements and services in metro stations, especially the connection between metro and other transportation modes. In terms of medium- and long-term planning, these results can help planners better understanding urban mobility.
The authors of the article acknowledge that the metro system is a restricted representation of urban mobility although it carries a large volume of passengers in a city and plays an important role in daily travel. The approach needs to be extended certainly to other traffic modes such as bus, tram etc. to enrich the analysis.
The integration of more transportation modes may be considered more accurate to understand urban mobility patterns and the link between mobility patterns and urban land use. Lastly, the conceptual framework proposed in the present paper may be applied in other cities having rail transit systems. Comparative and empirical studies across cities are encouraged in the future.
Transportation Systems (ITS) aim to improve safety, mobility and environmental performance of road transport. The INSIGMA project provides a fresh look at the possible innovations in this field, by enhancing the functionality and accuracy of ITS in urban environments.
Researchers Wojciech Chmiel, Jacek Danda, Andrzej Dziech, Sebastian Ernst, Piotr Kadluczka, Zbigniew Mikrut, Piotr Pavlik, Piotr Szved and Igor Wojnicki published an article online on 26th May 2016, named INSIGMA: an intelligent transportation system for urban mobility enhancement regarding an intelligent transportation system. The article provides an a-up -to date review on this issue. Here there are some of the key issues.
Modern Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are a useful and necessary tool made to help battle traffic congestion. Among other advantages, it is expected that dynamic traffic control and vehicle navigation will largely raise the constraints of road infrastructure development.
Currently, such systems are mainly based on statistical data acquired from historical traffic statistics, which are insufficient, especially in case of a sudden increase in traffic related to accidents and road collisions. A similar situation occurs in car navigation systems. Statistical traffic data no longer allow avoiding traffic jams and for this reason optimal solutions based on real-time data are, therefore, necessary.
The researchers highlight that the INSIGMA project is focused on providing advanced tools for traffic monitoring and for detection of dangerous events. The main objective is to analyze traffic parameters using dynamic data, obtained from existing and custom-developed sensors.
One of the core concepts of INSIGMA is the dynamic map: a representation of the road transport infrastructure, combined with information about current traffic intensity as well as historical traffic data. Such a set of data includes map-related parameters stored in a database, which can be visualized and delivered to the end user via a dedicated mobile or web interface. The system includes algorithms for dynamic route optimization, which operate on real-time dynamic data, as opposed to statistical data used by many existing road navigation applications.
What differentiates INSIGMA from other systems is the use of video detection and GPS positioning to gather information about the current traffic.
The INSIGMA system is based on three main data-oriented: the Static Map, the Dynamic Map and the Dynamic Map Warehouse They handle slow-changing, fast-changing and historical data related respectively to the transport infrastructure. The slow-changing data regards road infrastructure, including details like roads, junctions, lanes, traffic signs, and road accessibility. The accessibility parameter indicates whether particular roads are available for specific users, such as regular or emergency vehicles. An emergency vehicle, for instance, is allowed to use a sidewalk, while a regular vehicle is not.
The fast-changing data regard dynamic parameters, so-called monitoring parameters, which represent the current or recent traffic conditions and events, including threat reporting or detection. The historical data regard aggregated fast-changing data with relationships to the slow-changing data objects. Separating it from the dynamic parameters provides means to conduct time-based analysis offloading the Dynamic Map.
Data gathered by these three data storesare accessible through web service-based interfaces: IMS (INSIGMA-Map-Static) Interface, IMD (INSIGMA-Map-Dynamic) Interface, and IHD (INSIGMA-wareHouse-Dynamic) Interface.
A Dynamic Map system running at full throughput, handling 5 metropolitan areas and acquiring data from 11,250 sensors, generates a data growth rate of 500 facts per second. Assuming approximately 100 bytes per fact, the data volume is 28GB per week. Such a growth rate would overload the Dynamic Map by slowing down or crippling its processing capabilities. To prevent that, historical facts are transferred into the Dynamic Map Ware- house.
In the INSIGMA system, privacy is related to both video and GPS/GLONASS tracking. Each digital image from the camera can contain sensitive data, taking into account the privacy of registered persons or vehicles. Special attention is paid to the protection of images of faces, license plates and other information that can be used to identify identities.
4 Conclusions
The paper presents the contribution of the INSIGMA project to the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) domain. The proposed tools and components provide functions and services related to traveler information, traffic management and emergency transportation operations. They are built around the Dynamic Map concept, a repository which gathers dynamically changing and constantly updating traffic and event-oriented information.
The information gathered by the Dynamic Map comes from several sensors deployed in an urban area including but not limited to: video detectors and GPS trackers. Several services are also provided. These include route planning and traffic lights opti- misation as well as traffic management.
The researchers conclude that, compared with other ITS, the proposed system provides a comprehensive, integrated source of traffic related information. It is capable of being easily extended with a range of diverse sensors. Furthermore, it is applicable to urban areas where centralized and global route planning services tailored for specific users provide the greatest impact.
From a variety of functions which can be provided by an ITS, the system developed within the INSIGMA project supports: traveler information, including route planning, on-trip traffic information and route guidance, as well as traffic management (transportation planning and traffic control).
The paper stresses that the key concept within the system is the Dynamic Map, which integrates the description of a road network with dynamically- changing traffic information.
Within the project, advanced algorithms for dynamic route planning and traffic control have been developed. It is expected that their application in real life will significantly improve mobility and environmental performance.
Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11042-016-3367-5
Authors:
Timo Möler, Asutosh Padhi, Dickon Pinner and Andreas Tschiesner, all members of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility published an article in McKinsey & Company in December 2019, named “The future of mobility is at our doorstep”.
The article provides an up to date review on this issue. Here there are some of the key issues.
The past year was a pivotal one, with many important achievements across the disruptive dimensions of mobility: autonomous driving, connectivity, electrification and shared mobility (ACES). In 2019, electric-vehicle (EV) sales set another sales record global. Some players demonstrated truly driverless cars without backup drivers, setting new milestones in autonomous driving. Uber and Lyft – the two big disruptors in the ride-hailing space – went public in spring 2019. Also in 2019, regulators began granting approval to drone deliveries and to electric vertical takeoff and landing crafts, with these types of vehicles flying for the first time.
The article stresses that 2019 was also a year of reality checks, as congestion and public – transportation woes reached new heights for cities around the world, realization timelines for technology like autonomous vehicles (AVs) were postponed, and some new mobility business models failed to win over investors.
Authors point out that key risks for the industry remain elevated and that competition from new mobility attackers is intensifying, the road ahead remains bumpy, as today’s reality delivers a mixed picture for the future of mobility. On the one hand, there are big expectations with regard to future technologies and business models; on the other hand, there is an urgent need for a “double transformation”. In other words, preparing companies for the mobility of tomorrow also means making today’s business crisis resistant.
Investments across the mobility landscape
The authors remark a continued acceleration of investments in the relevant technologies – with e-hailing, semiconductors, and sensors for advanced driving – assistance systems and autonomous driving still being the front-runners.
On a regional level, activity in the United States is strongest, but tech-intense locations, such as Israel, also play important roles in the mobility ecosystem.
Autonomous driving
2019 was a year in which optimistic forecasts had to be scaled back to a certain degree. And the automotive industry is quickly turning into a true mobility ecosystem.
Yet the underlying logic for autonomous driving, especially in cities, remains intact. The article highlights that electric, shared AVs – also called robo-taxis or -shuttles – could address mobility’s pain points in cities (such as road congestion, crowded parking spaces, and pollution) while revolutionizing urban mobility, making it more affordable, efficient, user friendly, environment friendly, and available to everyone.
Of the global markets for AVs, China catches the eye. It has the potential to become the world’s largest market for AVs.
Connectivity
Connected cars are poised to become potent information platforms that not only provide better experiences for drivers but also open new avenues for businesses to create value. According to the authors, the key success factor for connectivity services is the clear value proposition the offering has, either to an external customer or to an internal stakeholder.
Electrification
While the signals are somewhat mixed for autonomous technology, the “E” in ACES – electrification – certainly gained momentum in 2019. This development was triggered by two trends: tightening regulation – for example, in Europe – and rising customer demand.
The challenge of making EVs profitable remains, but OEMs and their suppliers are working hard to address it successfully.
Advancements in battery technology, economies of scale in EV production, native EV design, and cooperation among OEMs can help bring down costs – which are currently still higher than for comparable internal – combustion – engine (ICE) vehicles.
Shared mobility
In this respect, 2019 certainly has been the year of many cities’ announcements of their future mobility visions, including micro mobility. With micro mobility being a nascent market in Europe, many start-ups introduced shared e-scooters in European cities.
The 2020 outlook
Consumers. As CO2 regulations in Europe kick in next year and more EVs need to be pushed onto the road, 2020 will be an important year to measure the reinforcing power of electrification. Early adopters love their EVs, but will followers as well?
Technology. Might 2020 be the year in which more attention is given to the transport of goods? The commercial-mobility segment could catalyze some noteworthy developments. One example here is autonomous driving in the context of shared mobility. Specifically, the replacement of the driver cost is a significant element of the total cost of ownership.
Market and competition. The authors understand that 2020 will be characterized as the year of the intensifying “double mobility transformation,” with players operating in an economic slowdown but, at the same time, needing to rethink their business models in a time of heightened city regulation, technology disruptions, and changing consumer needs.
The growing role of regulation. For many players and for many technologies, cities will be the most important stakeholders. From “sticks” (such as parking fees, low- or no-emission zones, and city tolls) to “carrots” (such as piloting new robo-taxi or -shuttle service-mobility solutions), it will be cities where the future of mobility will be decided.
ICBC is taking the next step into telematics research with a one-year pilot project to see if technology can improve driving and make B.C. roads safer.
Drivers can sign-up today to join the pilot which starts in November. If you have less than four years driving experience, either in the novice stage of the Graduated Licensing Program or with your full license, you’re eligible to join.