ITS European Congress, 30 May to 1 June 2022, has concluded with great success. Over 3,000 attendees gathered at the MEETT in Toulouse, exchanging knowledge and innovation for a brighter present and future for transport and mobility. The SHOW project was also present, reaffirming its status as an automated urban mobility leader.
Several SHOW partners attended one of Europe’s leading smart mobility events of the year: ITS European Congress. During this top-level transnational forum, the project participated in six special interest sessions, one Technical Paper and an interactive lightbox and a presentation at the ERTICO Stand, showcasing the enormous potential that results from cooperation and the exchange of talent and values. As Alberto Bellini, project manager at SHOW’s partner SWARCO, expressed during his intervention presenting Turin pre pilot, “we have continuous communication between people, vehicles and infrastructure. Here lies the cooperative goal that we pursue”.
Aiming to create an AV network for sustainable, green and connected mobility, SHOW joined the debate on 5G implementation, leveraging data and its application to ensure interoperability. The need to adapt infrastructure to this new reality driven by automation was also part of the discussion.
Knowledge sharing is vital to this project. Learning from the end-users gives SHOW a relevant overview of their demands, expectations and needs regarding automated mobility, guaranteeing success in its outcomes. Justyna Beckmann, CCAM Manager at UITP (the International Association of Public Transport, and SHOW coordinator), stated that “the educational point of view of such a project (users’ awareness) will play an important role in the deployment of automated vehicles in real life. And users’ acceptance is crucial for integrating AVs into the public transport networks.”
Andrea de Candido, DG R&I at the European Commission, who participated in one of SHOW sessions organised by ERTICO (moderated by Dr Nikolaos Tsampieris), highlighted the importance of international cooperation for reaching the project’s ambitious goals. In this session Manabu Umeda, Project Researcher at the University of Tokyo referred in his presentation to the Japan trials in CooL4 project. SHOW partners: Dr Ingrid Skogsmo (VTI) highlighted the SHOW pilot activities in Sweden, while Matti Kutila (VTT) presented the project activities in Finland. Nikolaos Tsampieris Senior Manager at ERTICO, remarked that “smart Mobility paves the way towards automation in CCAM”, underlining SHOW’s ambitious goal of transporting 1.500.000 people and 350.000 containers of goods.
Experiences on various deployments, including SHOW project partners Sitowise and Sensible4, were shared on the last day of the congress. Speakers from Roboride, Sitowise (Pekka Eloranta as moderator of the session), AuveTech, EasyMile and Sensible4 presented experiences of AVs deployment from an operator and European vehicle manufactures perspectives. The common discussion point was that deployment of AV “will improve accessibility to public transport as well as enable cities to give streets back to people.”
The project is in a crucial momentum, implementing numerous (pre) pilots in several countries. Among them are Turin, Tampere and Linköping: they presented updates and (preliminary) outcomes on their pilot activities, touching upon topics such as overcoming challenges like extreme weather conditions, as well as lessons learned from setting up a demonstrations site.
Subscribe to our newsletter to be updated on all SHOW developments.