08-26-2021 22:00 h, Aachen

Urban logistics rethought with partially automated light electric vehicles

Our Meetup series for interested parties presents and discusses current, practice-relevant research topics in the field of future mobility.

Cities are facing massive road infrastructure congestion. Today, last-mile logistics is carried out by conventional delivery trucks. These delivery trucks consume a large part of the urban infrastructure and have difficulty finding parking at their destination. This leads to long walking distances, poor human work ergonomics, and non-value-added process time. While the first part of the logistics chain is highly automated and very efficient, last mile logistics is still highly manual and full of interruptions, and also very costly (more than 50% of total delivery costs).
In addition, most cities already restrict delivery trucks from entering the city, which is a reason for logistics companies to bring delivery to the city by bike. But cargo bikes are limited in payload, leading to inefficient processes.

Ducktrain is an automated electric light vehicle system for sustainable and highly efficient urban last-mile logistics with a step-by-step go-to-road strategy: from semi-automated follow-me to automated driving. Ducktrain is an innovative vehicle system complementary to cargo bikes that can play an important role in the broad rollout of bicycle and LEV-based urban logistics.

The event starts at 18:00 hrs, the talk will be held in German.