Four Spanish polytechnic universities will work together on the project METROPOLIS, “Mobility in the city of the future. Preparing cities for the new 2030 mobility”.
The aim of this project is to develop cooperative applications to make the movement of passengers and goods in urban areas more efficient, more sustainable, safer and more equitable. This approach will be based on the capabilities of recent technologies launched on the market, the availability of real data from traffic operations and the introduction of feasible business models ensuring main stakeholders’ profitability.
Recent developments in connectivity, sensors and data management are triggering the digitization of traditional physical systems such as mobility. The information interchange among infrastructure, vehicle and passengers allows new mobility management strategies and behavioral changes. They may contribute to improve the efficiency of current mobility services in metropolitan areas while mitigating the negative effects to the environment and human settlements.
The project will start with a transversal analysis of current best practices and state-of-the art of all data-driven technologies and strategies in mobility sector. These technologies will be checked and tested during the project in two pilot test or case-studies: the A6 corridor and Moncloa interchange (Madrid) for passenger center measures, and the new Low Emission Zone launched within the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. Both areas are equipped with recent technological devices to monitor the flow of vehicles, pedestrians and commercial fleets.
Safer autonomous vehicles
Within the project, the role of the Instituto ai2-UPV will be provide useful tools to make safer and more sustainable the mobility of autonomous vehicles in the cities.
“Autonomous vehicles provide one of the most complete perception systems that we can find in the mobility ecosystems and are also defined as the key element for the future of smart and sustainable mobility,” explains Patricia Balbastre, researcher at the Instituto ai2-UPV. The number of sensors and components onboard an autonomous vehicle is therefore very varied. “Their use extends from everyday non-critical or soft real-time consumer electronics and telecommunications equipment, to highly critical automotive, railway, automation control and aerospace systems, which satisfy the most stringent real-time constraints.”
The issues of embedded system’s safety and security have been first addressed in the sectors of space and avionics by researchers of the Instituto ai2-UPV. Now, they will implement in autonomous vehicles that safe technology that they have previously used in space satellites.
The safety and security needs of modern embedded applications are combined with the constant tendency to build smart systems, that is, increase functionality, push for less power consumption, less processor needs, smaller memory footprints and less weight and that is the main milestones of METROPOLIS in the mobility of the cities.
The project consortium consists of the four Spanish Technical Universities (Madrid, Catalunya, Valencia and Cartagena), CARNET (Research hub affiliated to VW Research and SEAT), ALSA (bus operator) and AMB Informació (public company that manages the Surveillance Control Center in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area).