The Digital Hub Mobility is celebrating its one-year anniversary and has achieved initial success in developing new mobility concepts. Twenty-four teams have now developed new ideas for the mobility of the future for the digitalization initiative of the German federal government and the industry association Bitkom.
Just over a year ago, the UnternehmerTUM with a large Kickoff event at the IBM Watson IoT Center marked the launch of the Digital Hub Mobility The hub can now look back on its first successful year with many exciting projects.
One example of this is the development of a drone that gives firefighters a quick overview of an accident scene. Especially in difficult-to-access terrain such as mountains, the drone's camera can transmit useful images of injured people or property damage—even before rescuers arrive on the scene. An interdisciplinary team consisting of employees from chip manufacturer Infineon, telecommunications group Nokia, TÜV Süd, and international students developed a prototype for this at the Digital Product School.
"With the Digital Product School, the Digital Hub Mobility was able to create a unique creative environment. Participants work with modern agile approaches such as design thinking and solve real user problems efficiently and in a customer-oriented manner using digital products,"
says Kirstin Hegner, Managing Director of the Digital Hub Mobility.
Employees of partner companies work at the Digital Product School with talented individuals from around the world, just like a modern Silicon Valley startup, developing innovative mobility concepts over a three-month period. They also receive intensive training in their respective areas of expertise through workshops and coaching sessions with internal and external experts and researchers. If desired, the teams can subsequently further develop their products within the company or as their own startup.
Munich as an experimental and testing environment for urban mobility concepts
For example, the team at Munich's municipal utility company, in collaboration with Nokia, has designed a potential display system for subway stations that uses image recognition to determine how full each car of an incoming subway train is. This information could then be passed on to waiting passengers.
"This would allow passengers to board cars that still have free seats during peak hours, thus ensuring that trains are more evenly loaded. And if passengers can board more quickly, there will be fewer delays,"
explains Kirstin Hegner.
130 participants completed the Digital Product School within the first year and implemented many ideas, such as a new employee car-sharing model where managers can lend their cars to colleagues and be assured of getting them back on time. Kirstin Hegner is pleased with the results:
“We have thus come a significant step closer to our goal of creating an attractive experimental and testing environment for urban mobility concepts of the future in Munich.”
The Digital Hub Mobility is made possible by the initiative and financial support of 14 committed partners from industry – in addition to Audi, BMW Group, Daimler, Facebook, IBM, Nokia, SAP, Stadtwerke München, ADAC, Adidas, Infineon, MAN and TÜV Süd, Deutsche Telekom has also recently joined.
