inOut : review of the digital mobilities event  1/2

From 14 to 18 March 2018, Rennes and the greater Rennes area became the capital and playing field for new mobilities. At the Couvent des Jacobins Conference Centre and throughout the city of Rennes, 900 sector professionals and nearly 20,000 members of the public gathered to debate the future of mobilities, watch demonstrations and take part in full-scale trials. First part of our review of this event given over to creating the mobility for tomorrow.

14 March, 9:00 Digital and mobility sector professionals converged upon Rennes. Car manufacturers, Tech entrepreneurs, researchers, transport operators, and public sector players responsible for transport management were among those in attendance; all sharing the same objectives of discussing new economic models of mobility, exploring technologies that are shaking up transport behaviour, and meeting the challenges set by a new era of mobility.

With some attendees arriving from Paris via the new high-speed rail line opened in July 2017, participants were hosted at the Couvent des Jacobins, a showpiece of Breton heritage converted into a new generation conference centre: another symbol of Rennes' aspirations for the future.

14 March, 10:00. At the interplay between the digital technology and mobility sectors, inOut was born of a simple fact: the revolution that's changing travel habits is underway. From private vehicles to car sharing, from road maps to real-time navigation applications, from the manual gearbox to artificial intelligence: at the speed of a Hyperloop and in a million and one ways, digital technology is shaking up the way we travel.

With this as a starting point, and as summarised by Emmanuel Couet in his opening speech, the aim of inOut is 'to anticipate this revolution in the way transport is used rather than be subjected to it, and create conditions for sustainable growth throughout the country.' How? By bringing together public and private sector players, by supporting trials and allowing the public to experience these new mobility solutions.

14 March, 13:00. This revolution could be seen in action by just walking along Start-up Alley where more than 20 start-ups were to be found preparing the future of mobility. The companies in question were MyBus, Parkki, YoGoko, and Transway. Each start-up was there to pitch one if not several solutions to everyday mobility issues: finding a parking space more quickly, moving towards ticketless public transport, checking the history of a second-hand vehicle, and conducting head-counts on a school trip.

14 March, 17:30. Presenting and selling ideas. Seventeen start-ups were at the starting line of a business pitch for their transport and mobility-sector ideas. The structure of the pitch, invented and led by French Tech Rennes Saint-Malo, involved each start-up being given three minutes to present its idea to an audience of major companies (including Keolis, Groupe PSA, Groupe Renault, Orange, Siemens, and Enedis). These companies then selected up to four start-ups for bilateral meetings. A win-win experience came as a bonus, with those major groups present obtaining an overview of the sector's most innovative solutions and start-up companies being given a chance to accelerate their development.

We Now, one of the contenders, used inOut as an opportunity to announce its trial with the Rennes-based car sharing service City Roul', whereby for two months, City Roul' users would be able to test a personalised coaching service in eco-driving using We Now embedded technology.

14 March, 15:00. A few kilometres away, a demonstration, the first of its kind, had just been performed on the test tracks of the PSA site at Rennes-la-Janais. For the first time in France, PSA and Qualcomm presented C-V2X; technology that allows vehicles to communicate with each other almost instantly and, in time, to communicate with infrastructures and other road users (including pedestrians and cyclists). This involved a two-stage test whereby in the first situation the sudden stopping of a lead vehicle caused a signal to be transmitted to the other vehicle, which in turn emitted a warning sound to the driver. In the second situation, the slowing of a vehicle at an abnormal, but less sudden, rate resulted in a message showing on the dashboard display of the vehicle behind. This technology, due to be deployed in 2020 by two partners in China, will help to improve traffic flow and enhance road safety.

14 March, 16:00. As the heavyweights of the automotive and Tech sectors presented their new developments in the field of the connected and (soon?) autonomous vehicle, 60 makers from all sectors - researchers, designers, students and others - were hard at it on the PSA site during the OSV Camp. Convened as of the previous day for three days of vehicle prototyping and Open Source mobility solutions, they explored the Internet of things, vehicle accessibility and even battery management systems. Their work, which was later presented at the Couvent des Jacobins, is available in the form of a wiki on the Fabrique des mobilités site.

15 March, 9:00. Nicolas Demassieux, senior VP at Orange Labs, opened the second day of inOut and delivered his vision of rational artificial intelligence. Throughout the [IN]door event, the key issues facing the mobility of tomorrow were examined in detail: like an anatomist, Laurence Devillers analysed human-bot relations and the ethical dilemmas related to artificial intelligence, while urban mobility players sought to imagine conditions under which mobility data could be reasonably collected and shared. The driverless vehicle also figured on the agenda, with experts from three continents convened to analyse the major challenges and take stock of new developments in this technological and societal epic story. Each presentation illustrated the extent to which vehicles of the future are already being trialled today. As explained Ming Yang of Shanghai University, in China autonomous vehicle testing on public roads started on 1 March 2018, while in the United Arab Emirates, autonomous shuttles built by the Dutch company 2getthere have already transported 2 million passengers in the city of Masdar, reported the company's CEO. Back on the Old Continent, 20 autonomous vehicle prototypes by Groupe PSA have already logged more than 150,000km.

Read the rest of the digital mobility event review HERE