The international conference “Intelligent Transport Systems: a Tool or a Toy?” – Research and innovation opportunities and challenges for autonomous driving and new transport models took place in Žilina on 22-23 November 2016. It was held under the auspices of the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the European Union and gathered 125 participants from 22 European countries, covering diverse stakeholders notably from academia, public and private sectors, European institutions and associations.
This event aimed at bringing special attention to the role of research organisations in providing evidence to the policy makers for shaping the right ecosystem in ITS, and to the role of the industry, and in particular SMEs, in delivering innovative, sustainable and interoperable solutions. Particular attention was given to two important pillars of future mobility: Autonomous driving and Mobility as a Service (MaaS).
There was broad consensus among participants that ITS tools are not toys. In terms of autonomous driving, standardisation was recognised as the biggest challenge and automation as a high priority for the future. Autonomous vehicles are attracting the attention of industry and governments for the promises linked to their introduction. Technologies will be soon on the market and regulators will act as enablers, at least at the beginning. When it comes to liability, questions remain open in terms of responsibility for system malfunctioning, testing vehicles before being put in the market, positioning of insurance companies, etc.
As regards MaaS, participants acknowledged that each region/city has a different perception, acceptability or level of MaaS adoption. It is important that MaaS include public transport, but other services as well. A key issue to be addressed in MaaS concerns its legal implications, especially those related to the ownership, use and privacy of its data.
In general, the conference concluded that more research is needed on user behaviour and large data analysis. Cities have an important role to play in turning ITS technology into mobility solutions and ITS innovation concerns all types of cities regardless of their size.
A total of 24 proposals were received for the poster session (17 from the University of Žilina, 7 from abroad) out of which 15 were presented at the conference. The best poster award was granted to the Early Stage Investigator from Polytechnic of Torino, Giulia Melis.
As a follow up of the conference, a scientific report will be prepared on the main conclusions from the two parallel Working Groups (Autonomous Driving and MaaS). It will be published on the COST and ERAdiate websites and distributed to conference participants and additional stakeholders.
To maximise scientific impact, authors of selected posters will be invited to submit a paper based on their poster presentation. Contributions will be compiled into a special issue to be submitted to a scientific journal.
