Symposium on Challenges for Urban Mobility 2018
CARNET, in collaboration with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and the Automotive Research Centre Niedersachsen (NFF), organised the symposium Challenges for Urban Mobility 2018, held on 12 November. The event brought together international experts who shared their views of Connectivity and 5G, Mobility as a Service and Data&Mobility. The speakers addressed how to deal with global challenges in urban mobility. The audience gained deeper insight into the emerging opportunities of 5G technologies and could exchange ideas with top speakers.
The new edition of the symposium focused on the key role of new technology in the automotive market, and to the numerous solutions it provides to mobility and urban challenges.
5G Technology has enormous potential. It allows faster traffic data transmission and improves artificial intelligence I capacities for autonomous cars providing massive connectivity, high reliability and low latency. What are the benefits for the automotive industry? In 2019, half of all cars will be connected. They will become a kind of mobile sensor that exports and imports data from the cloud or shares it with other vehicles. There is uncertainty about the new business opportunities that can be generated, despite expectations. However, artificial intelligence is expected to be implemented in cooperative driving in the short term.
By the end of the 2050, 80% of the global population is expected to be living in cities. It will be vital to rethink urban spaces and mobility. MaaS is a digital platform providing a multi-modal transport system that can attract public and private transport and stakeholders, offering a door-to-door service. MaaS co uld be considered a good choice, but the marketplace for such a wide range of customers is uncertain. The symposium showed what MaaS could bring to countries’ development. It identified what stakeholders needed and the benefits that could be provided.
Speakers talked about new systems and technology that will be applied to benefit mobility in urban spaces in the coming year. However, all these changes are linked to the information that 5G and connectivity will provide, and how it will be managed. Data processing is needed, and is in increasing demand every year. What is clear is that data is an important tool to obtain user information for models, simulations and predictions, to provide accurate estimations of reality. Data may play an important role in the future of sustainable mobility, but it will not be enough.
The critical question is how data generated within a vehicle will interact effectively with data from the outside world through connected devices. We are all waiting for an era in which vehicles will not only drive themselves but also talk to us intelligently.
