NEWS - 2022/10/31

CARNET Participates in the Activities at the International Mobility Congress 2022

The International Mobility Congress took place in Sitges on 25-26 October. In this context, CARNET was invited to various activities. Dr. Monika Bachofner participated in a round table about global experiences in sustainable mobility.

What in the West is already considered outdated, in emerging countries can represent a revolution. Experiences and success stories from three different continents were presented during the session, considering also how to boost relationships between such diverse territories and improve their cooperation links.

As part of our activities during the congress, a workshop was carried out with professionals from the field. The session, which hosted a group of 8 experts related to the automotive sector, consisted of a brief presentation of the “Roadmap for the introduction of last mile robots” project to provide context to the experts. Then some questions were asked for the experts to answer, together with a short period of open discussion for each question.

In recent years, Catalonia is in a context of exponential growth in terms of quantities of goods delivered to metropolitan areas, mainly due to the introduction of e-commerce in society. So, regarding the fact that the communication technologies between vehicles, infrastructures, users and control elements are on an evolutionary path that is progressing appropriately, one of the solutions to face this problem is the ecosystems of autonomous delivery robots.

This fact, however, entails a break with the current established model and is conditional on the adaptation of the traditional elements. In this context, it will be necessary to anticipate how the adaptation of each element and/or the effect of autonomous delivery robots economically affects the existing actors and the new agents that will appear with the robotization of logistics.

The results of this workshop session allowed us to obtain the guidelines for the execution of the project and future implementation of this technology. The conclusions are very positive and help us visualize a very promising future in terms of scenarios full of autonomous delivery robots.

Dr. Laia Pagès moderating a round table at the International Mobility Congress 2022, in Sitges

Lastly, during the congress, Dr. Laia Pagès had the opportunity to moderate the round table “The digitalization of mobility and carsharing“. Given the energy shortage and the enormous difficulty of replacing combustion engine vehicles with electric vehicles, carsharing is configured as a central piece in the mobility scheme of the future.

The idea is that people move regularly in sustainable transport systems, public transport, on foot and by bicycle, and, occasionally, when the system does not satisfy mobility needs, then use a sharing system vehicle.

The session was divided into two blocks:

First, two international experiences were presented, one from Sweden (Steinar Danielsen, Sustainability Lead – Volvo Car Mobility) and another from Montreal and France (Nicolas Frasie, Head of Development and Public Affairs for Europe in Communauto).

During the second block, professionals from different institutions and backgrounds talked about the situation of carsharing in Catalonia and the difficulties of maintaining such services without institutional support (Pau Noy, President of MSS Foundation; Jordi Porta, Mobility Consultor; Arnau Vilardell, Som Mobilitat Coordinator).

Through initiatives like this congress, we are able to discover how new technologies are implemented globally and take a look beyond our borders. This will help us develop improved transportation systems, as we are able to collaborate with new stakeholders and new perspectives. And not only we can take a look at other territories of the globe, but also deep-dive into the technologies and solutions that are being implemented around the corner, which also helps development thanks to the lessons learned from the projects that are currently being executed, adapting our response to the real needs of users.