Last year, the Swiss Federal Council allocated funding to strengthen research in the field of digitalization for three SCCERs. SCCER Mobility was amongst them and submitted a proposal to Innosuisse the beginning of this year. With this proposal, five projects that are embedded into the different Capacity Areas received 1.3 million CHF in funding until the end of 2020. Along with building up new research capacity on the topic of digitalization and mobility, SCCER Mobility also welcomes new four new research groups to its network.

The project Smart Mobility Data Platform is part of Capacity Area A1 and led by Annett Laube and Peter Affolter, who head the Institute for ICT Based Management and the Institute for Energy and Mobility Research at Bern University of Applied Sciences, respectively. This planned demonstrator platform will be implemented in the car-free community of Braunwald, a holiday destination in the Glarus Alps. Here electric vehicles are used as a means of transport within the community. The data platform will allow for analyzing the real use of electric vehicles, batteries and charging stations in Braunwald. This will be done considering user privacy, under harsh and changing environmental/seasonal conditions, over a long period and independent of the utilized product specifications. This project brings new competencies such as acquisition technology of vehicle data, analysis of big data as well as data privacy and security to the center.

The research group Automotive Powertrain Technologies, led by Christian Bach at Empa, and Emilio Frazzoli’s group at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich join forces in the Automated Driving Sensor Testing Vehicle project. In light of autonomous vehicles likely playing an increasingly important role in the transport system, this effort aims to assess real world behavior of sensors, a key feature for enabling automated driving (AD). The sensor-testing vehicle will provide a way to test autonomous vehicle sensors/systems, investigate sensor behavior under real environmental conditions, analyze advanced data management strategies for AD-perception decision making as well as support the development of an AD-field test strategy for Switzerland. New expertise in automated driving, sensor technology and big data management will be established and integrated into the activities of Capacity Area A2.

In the project Decision Support System for Personalized Ride-Sharing Services, the group of Martin Raubal at the Chair of Geoinformation Engineering, ETH Zurich, are developing and testing a prototype for personalized, short-term and automated rideshare planning. Such tools can help reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption, CO₂ emissions and travel costs. Some of the new knowhow that will be brought to SCCER Mobility is spatially enhanced machine learning, novel data analysis methods such as context-aware spatio-temporal similarity measurement as well as real-time travel choice recommendations. HERE Technologies and ESRI Schweiz AG are collaborating in this effort and it is part of Capacity Area B1.

Martin Raubal’s group is also participating in another digitalization project together with the Institute for Applied Sustainability to the Built Environment, directed by Roman Rudel, and the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, led by Luca Maria Gambardella, both at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Italian Switzerland. This research is a collaboration between Capacity Areas B1 and B2. As its title implies it investigates howthe potential impact of electric mobility on grid stability can be optimized. The goal is to analyze the interaction between the grid and electric vehicles considering three different scenarios to cover the mobility needs in different regions in the canton of Ticino.

In a fifth project, the Learning Lab Future Transport Systems, which is an integrative SCCER Mobility research platform, will identify and explore links among all the projects outlined above. Mireia Roca Riu joined the team of the Learning Lab in November and will lead this activity. The aim is to monitor the development of the projects and propose a framework for cooperation and exchange of insights. At the same time, the results will provide an assessment of the contribution of these digitalization projects to the overarching strategy of SCCER Mobility.

Find out more about the Digitalization Action Plan from a presentation held at the SCCER Mobility Annual Conference or contact Mireia Roca Riu.