Opinion: AWARD at the heart of Intelligent Transport Systems

For many years traffic safety was the most crucial driver for ITS; now, emissions reduction is equally significant. The main contributor to reaching the climate target is because the use of clean fuels, which eventually will bring emissions close to zero. But, getting there will take many years still – in the meantime, ITS will play a significant role as an agent for optimizing and integrating the transport and mobility chains.

Filling up each vehicle better and using the infrastructure more efficiently depends on efficient integration through hubs like stations, terminals, and ports. New mobility services and efficient logistic chains also need to be automated and integrated across the transport modes – and thus, the hubs will play an important role.

Many ITS-related projects are piloting automated passenger transport in shuttles over short distances. To run seamless automated transport services over long distances, the interaction with private ports and terminals must be automated and operate 24/7.

AWARD addresses these issues by paving the way for the roll-out of automated transportation, whatever the weather conditions are. AWARD will deploy safe and efficient CCAM-oriented automated heavy-duty vehicles in real-life logistics operations. In the project, there is a focus on the logistic operation in and between terminals and ports. The variety of sites and use cases cover up all aspects for deploying automated operations in the future; Indoor and outdoor ground support for luggage handling at an airport, hub-to-hub service between the production site and warehouse; container transport and loading/unloading of cargo vessels and forklift operations in a warehouse.