Smart Mobility

In the field of Smart Mobility and in particular Cooperative Connected Automated Mobility, we see many opportunities to use the potential of technology to solve the problems of mobility by adding smartness and aiming to decrease the negative effects traffic jams and traffic injuries and deaths down to 0%. Within the Smart Mobility track of the Honors Academy we would like to challenge you to develop yourself in generating out-of-the-box ground-breaking new mobility solutions, using AI and connectivity as technological foundations.

Mobility impacts us all in our daily lives and the industry trying to provide mobility to all of us is therefore immense. Lots of technological developments constantly influence this industry and new possibilities to shake up the way we think about mobility arise at an increasingly rapid pace.

In recent years, the main technological drivers are developments in automation, Internet of Things, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, making it smarter.

The Smart Mobility field not only encompasses automotive, but also innovations in traffic and mobility issues using other modes of transport.

With the trend towards further automation, connectivity and cooperation of all sorts of transportation,  Smart Mobility is further evolving towards Cooperative Connected Automated Mobility. This field focusses on connecting self-driving vehicles, traffic management systems, mapping, efficient powertrains but also vulnerable road users (such as pedestrians and cyclists) and other modes of transport in order to establish a mobility system for all.

Smart Mobility is a unique track because it gives you the opportunity to see first-hand how technology is implemented in very practical, real-life applications. Furthermore, this means entire new ways of experiencing and utilizing technology need to be tailored to actual end-users. In general, the design process, hands-on experience with software, real-life testing of the software and user-testing are all topics that play a significant role in this track.

At the Smart Mobility track we believe in learning by doing: the track provides you as Honors students with real life projects, often in collaboration with industry and other research institutes and ask you to come up with new solutions. As an Honors student, you will work in teams on solving problems in these projects. You get to work with industry partners, get to build your team, dive into the technology using artificial intelligence, IoT and connectivity and test out the innovations your team has built, in real-world tests, with for example a real self-driving vehicle.

Teams consist of students from quite different disciplines: from built environment, mechanical & electrical engineering, industrial engineering, industrial design and computer science.

For these teams, a self-driving vehicle is available for implementing the developed core technologies and doing experiments with user focus groups.

An example of a project that blends all the topics mentioned above, was AUTOPILOT. This project, which was part of the larger European project AUTOPILOT with over 50 partners involved, used IoT to optimize the behaviour of autonomous vehicles and fine-tune the user experience. Over the course of two years, a team within Smart Mobility developed a smartphone application that did both of these: the application could be used as a way to summon an real-life autonomous taxi for the end user, while the car used the data of the smartphone user to know when to slow down without having to visually detect a smartphone user and choose the optimal route based on the crowdedness of an area. Besides working on the software to write this application, the team collaborated on a European scale with companies such as TNO, Technolution, Huawei, NEC and AIIM within AUTOPILOT. Towards the end of the second year, large scale user-tests with over 40 real-life users were conducted with the autonomous vehicle and smartphone application to see how actual users reacted to and experienced the technology.

• Apply Artificial Intelligence to enhance and automate a self-driving vehicle (perception & planning) or predict traffic of VRUs and vehicles
• Apply IoT and communication technology to develop cooperative and connected mobility
• Use Human Centered Design for designing mobility solutions that people really want
• Work in teams and with real test vehicles

Want to know more? Contact Jos den Ouden, j.h.v.d.ouden@remove-this.tue.nl.