Mobility is becoming one of the biggest problems currently suffered by cities around the world. The roads and streets are not prepared to absorb such numbers of vehicles, so traffic jams are continually occurring.
Specifically, the latest 2022 Annual Traffic Measurement Report published by INRIX, a specialist in data and traffic analysis, places Barcelona as the Spanish city that suffers the most traffic congestion on a daily basis, placing the average number of hours lost behind the wheel in the metropolitan area in 47 hours per year.
Traffic congestion not only increases the time we spend on the road, but also increases our fuel consumption, harms the environment, causes air and noise pollution, and reduces quality of life, resulting in a major negative impact on the economy and in society.
Therefore, as our cities evolve, technologies that aim to alleviate congestion and make getting around the city as easy, efficient and sustainable as possible are increasingly essential.
Hypervisoul, founded by Lluís Vidal Mut, Ferran Vidal Codina and anJosé Trio Romero, designs, creates and operates the road and traffic management system of the future, to become a key player in the ecosystem of cooperative, connected and automated mobility.
“We developed technologies for the implementation of the first traffic and road management system that will allow mobility with zero congestion and that will have a positive impact on the environment and will bring economic wealth to the territories”, explains co-founder José Triano.
The main objective of the project is to make road transport more efficient and sustainable, going far beyond what can be achieved only with the intelligence of connected and automated vehicles. “We intend to have a marketable product by the end of this year that can provide information to vehicle drivers through smart devices about the speed at which they should travel to have a positive impact on traffic and reduce emissions,” adds Triano.
Surprisingly, the problem of the roads in terms of congestion, loss of transport capacity and excess emissions, is not the number of vehicles that are circulating on them. The origin of the problem is hidden in the different driving strategies that each citizen has behind the wheel. “If we standardize the way we drive, we will be able to increase transport capacity on the roads and implement strategies to avoid traffic jams”, explains Triano.
“Although the greatest potential of our solution is obtained in scenarios with 100% connected and automated vehicles, we can already offer information to those drivers who wish to contribute to a better flow of traffic and, in addition, avoid excess emissions,” he concludes.
On November 24, the Antena TrenLab Awards were held, an initiative that arises within the framework of collaboration between Renfe, the Mataró City Council and the TecnoCampus and whose objective is to promote startups with innovative solutions for the digitalization of railway stations, customer satisfaction, 3D application and other disruptive technologies that help imagine new mobility scenarios.
During the evening, the company Hypervisoul was awarded the Keep it Open! Disruptive Challenge award, for its Dear Small Train project, which proposes adapting its smart road management technology to the railway as a solution.
“Our solution consists of sending recommendations to a connected and automated vehicle that travels over an infrastructure, this can be road or rail,” explains José Triano. “We found a use case involving the operation of automated light rail vehicles that work on demand,” he says. “In Europe, 6 consortia are underway to manufacture vehicles of this type for low-density rural areas,” he adds. “To operate such a system, you need a traffic orchestrator, Hypervisoul can fill that role and contribute to revolutionizing rail transport services in rural areas”, he reveals.
“For us, this award gives us the opportunity to work with a large group such as Renfe, to identify needs and adapt our solution from road to rail,” explains Triano. “It is also a great opportunity to work together with the TecnoCampus, which helps us overcome the technological challenges identified to develop our solution”, he comments.
“Currently, we stay one week a month in the facilities of the Antena TrenLab space in Mataró,” explains Triano. “We took advantage of that week to discover the possible collaborations that exist with the TecnoCampus and update our mentors on the status of our project”, he reveals. “We also attended very enriching workshops and looked for synergies between the other accelerated startups”, he concludes.
