When is the taxi drone coming?

When is the taxi drone coming?

How does a taxi drone work? What are charging robots? And what happens if the cameras of autonomous vehicles cannot read traffic signs correctly? 50 participants from all over Europe investigated these and many other questions over four days at the Mobility Mission Linz as part of the EU project RECIPROCITY. The automobile cluster of the Upper Austrian location agency Business Upper Austria invited and put together the program. The participants came from Albania, Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Norway, Austria, Romania, Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine and Hungary. Below are some highlights of the program.

RISC Software GmbH demonstrated its research project “Crash me if you can” using a toy car racing track. It's about how cameras in vehicles recognize traffic signs and how recognition is influenced by the weather, pollution, stickers on the signs or hackers. Using the car racing track, Stefan Thumfart showed how the algorithm interpreted the 70 kmh speed limit as a 100 kmh speed limit, the car was traveling too fast and therefore caused an accident.

Anyone who leaves their electric car in a parking lot for a longer period of time - for example at work or at the airport - could use the charging robots from ALVERI GmbH from Ried im Innkreis in the future. "Parked electric vehicles are simply charged autonomously by the ALVERI CHARbO. Without manual support, the CHARbO recognizes the vehicles and starts the charging process," explained Ehsan Zadmard. A robot creates 20 vehicles and the login works via an app.

The impressive things that are happening in Vienna when it comes to Smart City and mobility were told, among others. Günter Klaus from ÖAMTC: "Our breakdown helpers travel with e-bikes, the so-called breakdown bikes. They have everything they need with them. In 90 percent of cases they can fix the breakdowns." Christoph Singelmann from Urban Innovation Vienna presented the City of Vienna's Smart City Mobility Strategy. The topics were sharing concepts, subway expansion and the combination of sharing - also for vans - with public transport and city bikes using an app.

The highlight of the second day was the factory tour at the aircraft supplier FACC AG in Ried im Innkreis. Andreas Perotti from FACC and Uwe Breitschopf from LINZ AG provided information about the status quo of the taxi drone project in Linz. These are already underway in China, and in Linz - depending on official approvals - at least unmanned test flights will hopefully be ready soon. “The autonomous drones will operate on predetermined flight routes – for example between Linz main train station and the airport in Hörsching – on demand,” said Perotti and Breitschopf. Other planned red areas are between the LINZ AG headquarters on Wiener Straße and the harbor, from the harbor to Urfahr or between the harbor and solarCity.