PROJECT

AURA

Problem Statement

Autonomously operating mobility systems or delivery services offer significant development potentials in terms of quality of life and basic services in non-urban areas such as former lignite mining regions. However, assessing the potential success of micro-mobiles operating independently on sidewalks and bike paths requires comprehensive environmental information from the operational areas, such as minimum path widths, pedestrian traffic flow, or sightlines. These are only partially available and heterogeneously structured away from major cities.

Project Objective

The aim of the project is to design strategies for bicycle-based collection of environmental data relevant to the successful operation of an autonomous micro-mobile on sidewalks (visibility of specific areas, infrastructure parameters, pedestrian flow, network coverage, environmental data). The project evaluates various data collection methods in terms of efficiency and the quality of aggregated information. The usability of the data is examined in two specific smart city/town application scenarios (rental bicycles with autonomous deployment mode and delivery robots) with corresponding studies. Thus, the project contributes to the data-driven development of intelligent mobility and logistics concepts that cover the specific characteristics of different settlement areas.

Implementation

Necessary parameters, as well as the corresponding gaps in available data (OSM, government data), are identified at different locations. For data collection, necessary data are collected using multimodal sensor sets integrated into rental bicycles and involving a network of volunteers via smartphone app on the bicycle. The quality of the data is evaluated in terms of coverage and diversity of representation.

Project Partners

• Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg
• Hochschule Anhalt, Köthen
• Endiio Engineering GmbH, Freiburg
• TINK GmbH, Konstanz
• DigiPL GmbH, Halle (Saale)
• CyFace GmbH, Dresden
• PTV AG, Karlsruhe
• Nordsachsen District
• Hochschule Merseburg