NeMo.bil
Development of a system of co-operating vehicles for a sustainable and individualised public transport system
The NeMo.bil project (coordinated by INYO Mobility GmbH) is developing an innovative, swarm-like mobility system that will enable a new form of sustainable, on-demand passenger and freight transportation in rural areas. To this end, a new systemic approach is being pursued, based on two different types of vehicles: automated driving ultra-light vehicles (NeMo.Cab), which serve the first and last mile of passenger transport and form a convoy for longer distances. This convoy is pulled by a larger automated vehicle (NeMo.Pro).
The smaller NeMo.Cabs can carry up to four people, while the larger NeMo.Pros are used to transport 15-20 people and also serve as mobile charging stations. They allow the convoy to travel longer distances and at higher speeds. By combining and merging the differently designed vehicles, the overall system (NeMo.bil) achieves unprecedented energy efficiency. The goals of this on-demand mobility service are to improve user acceptance and to reduce costs, resources, and emissions.
Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) with €17.1 million, the project has the potential to fundamentally change mobility as we know it today. The demand-driven approach combines the convenience of car ownership with the energy efficiency of public transport in a novel way. Citizens can make their mobility wishes known, either currently or in advance, via an app. An Internet platform is used to collect and optimize transportation requests. For the first time, the NeMO.bil approach creates an individualized public transport system that allows for a continuous journey at any start and end point without switching.
To achieve these ambitious goals, 20 companies and organizations are working together in an interdisciplinary consortium. The FIWARE Foundation e.V., for example, is responsible for developing the solution module for planning and controlling the swarm system. The company CADFEM simulates the flow resistance of the convoy and develops virtual 3D city and traffic space models. Inyo Mobility GmbH, founded in 2022, is developing the autonomous vehicle NeMo.Cab and HOLON GmbH is developing the larger towing vehicle NeMo.Pro. Other participants include TU Dortmund, TH Augsburg and PHOENIX CONTACT E-Mobility GmbH, which are responsible for various tasks such as conducting sociologically based simulation experiments, integrating the rolling test vehicles and developing a bidirectional charging system.
Contribution Institute for AI Safety and Security
In this project, the Institute for AI Safety and Security ensures the connectivity of the project's digital solutions to these overarching data and service ecosystems in the field of mobility. In particular, it promotes the transfer into practice and prepares for scaling. In this context, the Institute's tasks include the conception and creation of trustworthy data spaces and their networking. The integration of approaches to determine and guarantee data quality and data provenance plays an important role. Freely available software modules and freely available or open standards play an important role, for example in the context of connectors. In order to ensure a high level of data security and privacy, Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) and modern encryption approaches are provided to protect the data used. The institute can draw on the expertise gained in the BMWK-funded lighthouse projects Catena-X and Gaia-X 4 Future Mobility.
The various project partners work together in an interdisciplinary manner and proceed as follows: First, qualitative and quantitative surveys of user behavior will be conducted. The collected data will then be applied to agent-based simulations of mobility systems. The knowledge gained from these simulations will enable the development of an open source user interface and control platform tailored to the needs of the users. In parallel, the autonomous drive train and lightweight vehicles, the scalable hydrogen system, and the coupling interface, among others, are being developed. These innovations will lead to new business models that accelerate digital transformation. The intensive use of data from traffic areas and vehicles forms the basis for intermodal mobility and opens up new business models for various providers.
