© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
A. KhamisSmart Mobilityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7101-8_2

2. Smart Mobility Triad

Alaa Khamis1  
(1)
Courtice, ON, Canada
 
Mobility is the ability and potential of passengers to travel and freight to be transported. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (Flowers, 1998), mobility is a core human right and a basic need and foundation of social, economic, and cultural exchanges of people, businesses, and societies. The Sustainable Mobility for All1 initiative formally established in 2017 aims at achieving sustainable mobility through focusing on the following four goals:
  • Safety: Drastically reduce fatalities, injuries, and crashes.

  • Green: Minimize the environmental footprint of mobility (greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and air pollution).

  • Access: Connect all people, including women and communities, to economic and social opportunities.

  • Efficiency: Optimize the predictability, reliability, and cost effectiveness of mobility.

Smart mobility is the promotion of sustainable mobility that guarantees seamless access to different modes of mobility and enables people or cargo to get from one place to another in a way that is safe, clean, and most efficient (fast, convenient, comfortable, productive, and cheap). Smart mobility is built on five principles, namely, safety, flexibility, efficiency, integration, and clean technology.

Important

According to Reportlinker, the global market size of smart mobility is expected to reach $91 billion by 2026, rising at a market growth of 18.4% CAGR during the forecast period. The rewards of unlocking smart mobility could be vast, as this market is expected to generate $270 billion in revenues and profits of $125–150 billion by 2040 (Smart Mobility Team, 2018).

The future mobility is people-centric, software-defined, connected, and electric. With people-centric mobility, quality of life in the cities will be improved. Software algorithms play crucial roles in enabling advanced assisted driving and automated driving vehicles, shared mobility services, Mobility-as-a-Service, mobility on demand, and seamless integrated mobility. Automated mobility will reduce injuries and fatalities, improve access to mobility for those who currently cannot drive due to age or disability, and create new business models such as passenger economy. Shared mobility relies on sharing economy business model that replaces ownership with usership. Connected mobility creates new data-rich environments and is an enabler for many applications and services that will make our roads safer, less congested, and eco-friendlier. Electrification is an enabler for zero emission and sustainable mobility. However, the widespread deployment and the societal acceptance of smart mobility technologies like automated driving will depend not only on the maturity of the technology but also on the availability of a well-developed governance framework and the proper city planning to accommodate these evolving technologies. This means that smart mobility depends on a triad of complementary factors, namely, technology, governance, and city planning, as illustrated in Figure 2-1.

The three components of this smart mobility triad are not separate components as they impact each other. The following sections shed some light on these three components.

2.1 Smart Mobility Governance

The creation of a comprehensive and effective governance framework for smart mobility services is challenging and is a moving target as this framework should embrace existing and emerging technologies and encourage innovation while ensuring societal and environmental risks are identified and carefully managed.

There is an old parable about an elephant and a group of blind men in a room. None of these men had come across an elephant before. After each having touched a different part of the elephant in the room, the blind men are asked to describe the elephant from what they have just experienced. The blind man who felt the leg declares, “It’s like a tree or a pillar”; the one who felt the tail declares with confidence, “It’s like a rope”; the one who felt the trunk says, “It’s like a snake or a hose”; the one who felt the ear declares without doubt, “It’s like a soft blanket”; and the one who felt the belly declares knowingly, “It’s a wall.” So each blind man senses the elephant from his particular point of view and comes up with a different conclusion. Likewise, smart mobility governance regulations should be developed taking into consideration different opinions and concerns from multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders include policy makers, city authorities, environment activists, insurance companies, equipment/mobility platform manufacturers, smart mobility service providers, drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, public transit users, ridesharing users, micromobility users, and other users of smart mobility services. None of these stakeholders have the full picture about what is needed to regulate the smart mobility services and how to balance different needs and demands.
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Figure 2-1

Smart Mobility Triad

The legal and regulatory environment around several smart mobility technologies is still unclear and not well developed especially when it comes to safety verification and validation, mixed traffic management (nonautomated driving with automated driving vehicles), data privacy, and liability. Considering safety as the top priority, several safety standards and safety performance assessment programs are available and keep evolving. For example, to deal with possible hazards caused by malfunctioning behavior of E/E safety-related systems, the ISO 26262 Functional Safety standard was introduced. The system faults can be deterministic and attributable to causes or unpredictable and probabilistic in case of random hardware failure. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a structured approach commonly used by automakers to discover potential failures that may exist within the design of a vehicle or a process.

The European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP)2 is commonly used for car safety performance assessment. Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF or ISO/PAS 21448) (ISO, 2019) was developed to address new safety challenges that assisted driving and automated driving vehicle software developers are facing. SOTIF addresses performance limitations in sensors, algorithms, and actuators. SOTIF provides guidance on design, verification, and validation measures. Several features can potentially use SOTIF such as longitudinal control, lateral assist, lane changes, hand-free driving, auto parking, and auto-summon. Inclement conditions are also challenging for automated driving vehicles for several reasons. Snow and rain can obscure and confuse sensors, hide markings on the road, and make a vehicle perform differently. The ultimate objective of SOTIF is to limit the number of unknown unsafe states that the automated driving system (ADS) could be in. Moreover, Concepts of Design Assurance for Neural Networks (CoDANN) was developed by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) (Cluzeau et al., 2020) as a way to verify and validate data-driven models for safety-critical applications. For more information about verification and validation methods for SAE level 3–4 automated driving (conditional/high automation), the reader can refer to the “Safety First for Automated Driving (SaFAD)” white paper published by 11 major stakeholders in the automotive and automated driving industry, including Audi, Baidu, BMW, Intel, Daimler, and VW (Wood et al., 2019). The Safe Drive Initiative (SafeDI) developed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) seeks to bridge the gap between the industry’s expertise in AV safety and the regulators’ desire to set policy that safeguards AV deployment (World Economic Forum (WEF), 2020). Various types of alliances, coalitions, standards bodies, and partnerships available for industry decision-makers related to autonomous driving are highlighted in the AV Governance Ecosystem report (World Economic Forum (WEF), 2021) published by Autonomous and the WEF. The Autonomous3 global community publishes updated information about different initiatives and coalitions for automotive and autonomous mobility industry decision-makers.

Liability aspects of smart mobility technologies such as automated driving systems (ADSs) are still uncertain and not fully defined. Different forms of liability should be discussed such as owner liability, manufacturer/supplier liability, insurer liability, and intelligent transportation system (ITS) liability. Owners would be liable for any accident if the automated driving vehicle is not insured. In case of product failure, the civil liability will be imposed on the producers, own-branders, and importers of defective products. The insurer is directly liable according to terms and conditions of insurance coverage. The ITS owner and manager may be also liable if the accident occurs due to infrastructure failure.

Generally speaking, the legal landscape of autonomous vehicles is still evolving. In recent years, several regulatory and legislative actions focused on automated driving systems have been initiated in different courtiers such as the H.R.3388—SELF DRIVE Act in the United States, UK Code of Practice for Automated Vehicle Trialling, Autonomous Vehicle Bill in Germany, French legislative framework for autonomous cars, and EU Standard for Safety for the Evaluation of Autonomous Products (UL-4600). For example, the SELF DRIVE Act blocks states from banning self-driving vehicles, grants exemptions to existing safety standards for a company’s first 100,000 vehicles, and requires manufacturers to develop plans to thwart cyber-attacks on digitally run vehicles. Germany has recently approved the world's first legal framework for integrating autonomous vehicles in regular traffic. The adopted legislation will change traffic regulations to allow driverless vehicles on public roads by 2022, laying out a path for companies to deploy robotaxis and delivery services in the country at scale. According to NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others, 2017), public trust and confidence in the evolution of ADSs has the potential to advance or inhibit the testing and deployment of ADSs on public roadways. This also applies to other disruptive smart mobility systems and services such as air taxis and autonomous cargo ships. For example, the quickly evolving urban air mobility (UAM) platforms for people and cargo transportation require a regulatory environment to address different aspects of UAM such as safety, privacy, noise pollution, visual disruption, and wildlife impact and compliance with different civil aviation standards and recommended practices such as ICAO SARPs, FAA FARs, JAA, EASA, and so on. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is now one step closer to the much anticipated “Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM)” ecosystem. UTM will identify services, roles, and responsibilities, information architecture, data exchange protocols, software functions, infrastructure, and performance requirements for enabling the management of low-altitude uncontrolled drone operations. UTM is a separate but complementary framework to the FAA’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. Changing maritime laws and regulations is still a challenge against accommodating the use of autonomous ships for people mobility and cargo delivery. Although the regulations in national waters can be adapted quicker, changing international regulations to facilities the introduction of autonomous ships in international waters will take some time to address several aspects of security, safety and liability. Governance and regulatory processes that support, or sometimes prevent, the development and implementation of smart mobility solutions (shared, automated, electric, integrated) are highlighted in (Finger and Audouin, 2018).

2.2 City Planning

Just as the arrival of the first automobiles fundamentally changed our society in the early 1900s, smart mobility systems will trigger evolutionary and revolutionary changes in the city planning. These changes will include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Replanning transport corridors and city streets to accommodate more pedestrians, cyclists, riders in shared transportation, and less cars

  • Setting up walking routes and cycling lanes for active, soft, and inclusive mobility

  • Enabling bicycle highways (a.k.a. bicycle freeways or superhighways) that offer a direct route with few intersection stops

  • Establishing emergency safe spots in the city for automated driving vehicles in case remote/on-site human intervention is needed

  • Installing harbors as part of the highways to be used in case of faulty autonomous vehicles or unplanned road events

  • Upgrading city infrastructure to provide real-time traffic updates, traffic accidents/incidents, social/sport event events that may affect the traffic, work zones and any temporary changes to the roadworks such as road closure and lane change. Safety critical information can be gathered by infrastructure-mounted sensors and transmitted to the connected vehicles

  • Installing connected mobility infrastructure like ITS, smart intersections, and smart pavement

  • Enabling highly visible and readable signages such as pedestrian crossings (e.g., pelican, puffin, toucan, and zebra crossings), school zone, railway crossing, yield, road edges, curves, speed limits and parking to adopt assisted and automated driving vehicles. In this context, EU Member States investigate unifying safety critical road signs to aid with recognition by assisted and automated driving vehicles

  • Replacing road signage with digital and connected road signage to deal with a problem like road infrastructure deterioration that may impact the operation of the automated driving systems

  • Creating new pedestrian unsignalized crosswalks to avoid a crosswalk chicken game

  • Upgrading engineering countermeasures for speed management such as horizontal deflection (e.g., roundabouts, lateral shifts, chicanes), vertical deflection (e.g., speed humps, raised crosswalks and cushions) and street width reduction (e.g., on-street parking, road diets and corner extensions)

  • Installing smart parcel lockers for last-mile delivery

  • Allocating stacks and racks/pickup and drop-off points for mobility on demand systems

  • Setting up stations for micromobility

  • Hosting more electric vehicle charging stations, wireless/cordless charging pads and charging roads that enable charging while driving

  • Assigning air taxi takeoff and landing locations

  • Enabling smart parking to allow continuous monitoring of the parking space and automate several operational processes such as detection of parking availability and digital payment. These smart parking systems need to be upgraded to accommodate emerging technologies such as Automated-Valet-Parking (AVP) and automated driving electric vehicle parking. Examples of these changes include optimized layout, charging points/wireless charging pads, communication infrastructure and drop-off and retrieval zones

  • Finally, with the emerging heavy truck platooning technology, bridge operational constraints should be considered during fleet management. Bridge design standards need to be revised as well

2.3 Smart Mobility Technology

In his book Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible (Clarke, 2013), the English science fiction writer and inventor Arthur Clarke formulated his famous Three Laws, of which the third law is the best-known and most widely cited: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Connected vehicle technology is the magic that creates new data-rich environments and enables many applications and services that will make our roads safer, less congested, and eco-friendlier. Shared mobility technology is the magic that replaces ownership with usership. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), mobility on demand (MOD), and seamless integrated mobility systems (SIMS) are the magic that enables seamless mobility as the neo-liberalization of people and goods transportation. Self-driving technology is the magic that will dramatically reduce injuries and fatalities, improve access to mobility for those who currently cannot drive due to age or disability, and open the doors to passenger economy. 3D mobility is the magic that moves us from restricted mobility in two-dimensional streets that enables only 2-DOF (degree of freedom) (lateral and longitudinal motion) to 3-DOF mobility (lateral, longitudinal, and vertical motion) or more accurately 6-DOF mobility (lateral, longitudinal, vertical, roll, pitch, and yaw) considering the rotational movements of the aerial platform. Zero-emission hyperloop technology is the magic that will take you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 35 minutes instead of 2.5 hours in a high-speed rail system. Electrification is the magic that will enable net zero emission and sustainable mobility in the near future.

The technological aspects of smart mobility can be explained in terms of foundational technologies, technology enablers, and disruptors as illustrated in Figure 2-2. The lists shown in this figure are not comprehensive of today’s foundational technologies, enabler technologies, and disruptors that keep changing dynamically. However, the mentioned technologies are the core building blocks of the existing and possibly emerging smart mobility systems and services. Moreover, other hardware-related technologies like embedded systems, sensors, actuators, body design, displays, and other technologies such as E/E architecture, testing, verification, validation, and cybersecurity are of equal importance but are not covered in this book.
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Figure 2-2

Smart Mobility: Foundational Technologies, Technology Enablers, and Disruptors

The following chapters focus on the technological aspects of smart mobility systems and services describing their foundational technologies, technology enablers, and disruptors. Foundational technologies covered in this book include Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), Geographic Information System (GIS), wireless communication, mobile cloud computing, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and electrification. PNT technologies endow smart mobility systems with the ability to localize stationary and mobile assets within the system, guide the navigation of the mobile assets, and maintain accurate and precise timing. GIS provides the necessary geographical information to abstract the work environments. Wireless communication enables the transmission and exchange of real-time data with high reliability within the smart mobility system. Mobile computing enables authorized end users and mobile assets to gain a speedy access to data, information, and computation from wherever they are. Based on the concept of distributed computing, blockchain technology enables several services such as authentication, access control, and fast payment and has the potential to reshape smart mobility systems and services. IoT technologies enable connecting any stationary or mobile asset within the smart mobility system to the Internet and facilitate data sharing for monitoring, control, and optimization. AI is a foundational technology and a driving force behind several existing and emerging smart mobility systems and services. Robotics is seen as a foundational technology given the fact that several smart mobility technologies began to emerge from robotics research labs and are based on advances in robotics fields in terms of mechanical design, locomotion systems, perception, planning, control, navigation, and coordination algorithms. Electrification is also another foundational technology for decarbonized sustainable mobility. More details about these foundational technologies are provided in Chapter 3.

In the context of smart mobility, the book covers several technology enablers such as intelligent infrastructure, connected mobility, automated mobility, e-mobility, micromobility, active/soft mobility, inclusive mobility, and Context Awareness Systems (CAS). Supportive intelligent infrastructure includes intelligent transportation systems, smart pavement, smart intersections, high-quality cycling infrastructure such as cycle highways (a.k.a. bicycle freeways or superhighways), smart parking, and charging infrastructure. Connected mobility is a key enabler for real-time navigation and routing, traffic information, safety warnings, accident avoidance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and automated driving systems (ADSs). Automated driving enables the radical reduction of injuries and fatalities usually caused by human driver errors. E-mobility enables and powers different environment-friendly mobility platforms such as e-cars, e-bikes, e-scooters, eVTOL, and electric shuttles/commuters. Micromobility platforms enable first-/last-mile affordable and sustainable mobility. Active, soft, or zero-impact mobility opens doors to a healthy, cheap, fun, and environmentally friendly option for first-/last-mile urban mobility. Mobility aids enable inclusive mobility for the elderly and physically challenged. Last but not least, situational awareness is an enabler for context-aware mobility systems and services able to adapt following specific contextual information. More details about these technology enablers are provided in Chapter 4.

Mobility disruptors described in the book include disruptive mobility modes, shared mobility, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), mobility on demand (MOD), seamless integrated mobility systems (SIMS), last-mile delivery, Vehicle-as-a-Service (VaaS), gig economy, and passenger economy. Disruptive mobility platforms for people mobility and goods delivery include autonomous ground vehicles (e.g., self-driving shuttles (SDSs), autonomous wheelchairs, autonomous carts, and autonomous robot valets), urban air mobility (e.g., air taxis, air metro, and last-mile delivery drones), and marine vehicles (water taxis, water buses, and autonomous boats/ships). Automated people movers, hyperloops, and urbanloops are other examples of disruptive mobility platforms. Vehicle sharing, peer-to-peer sharing, demand-responsive transit (DRT), ridesharing, ridehailing, ridesourcing, and ridesplitting services are examples of shared mobility services. MaaS, mobility on demand, and seamless integrated mobility systems facilitate easy-to-access and seamless mobility. Modern last-mile delivery services focus on movement of goods from a warehouse or a distribution store to the final delivery destination in the fastest, most flexible, and transparent way possible. In the era of disruptive innovation, a mobility platform or a vehicle can be seen as a service to enable sharing and monetizing the unused computational and/or networking resources in the vehicle and/or the huge amount of collected data. Several smart mobility services can be enabled based on gig economy and passenger economy especially in the era of automated driving vehicles where vehicles can be repurposed for different leisure, business, or healthcare uses. More details about these disruptors are provided in Chapter 5.

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