On February 6th and 7th, the kick-off meeting of the ANTITRASH project: “SMART TRASH DETECTION AND DAMAGE PREVENTION FOR SHARED MOBILITY” (EIT Urban Mobility Business Plan 2020_eit20007) took place in City of Hamburg Hochbahn. This project has been funded in the call of Innovation Project 2019 from the EIT Urban Mobility. This is a coordinated project in which collaborate the Microtech Lab (microtech.upc.ed), Intexter and CARNET from UPC-BarcelonaTech, AALTO University, NFF at TU Braunscheweig, SEAT, Zone Cluster and City of Hamburg.
Summary of the ANTITRASH project
ANTITRASH will develop an automatic detection of trash or damage in a shared vehicle or public transport with complementing new interior materials for car-sharing purposes, nanotechnology for odor detection and interior air quality assurance.
Trash and damage will be detected with machine learning system, using a camera in the car. Intelligent materials are studied for increased durability of car interior and perception of spills. Odor sensors will be combined to microfluidics actuators to detect odor and neutralize it. The system will also serve shared car users by helping them not to forget their valuables in the vehicles.
The system will be used by shared vehicles fleets, which are owned by our customers: companies, cities and municipalities.
Main benefit is that the need for maintenance and cleaning is quantified for operator of a shared vehicle fleet. Furthermore, the user who has littered or caused damage to a shared vehicle can be held accountable, since the status of the shared vehicle is checked after every user. In addition to cleaner vehicles, odor neutralization will ensure a pleasant and comfortable transportation experience.
The problem is that shared vehicles are “no one's property” from the user perspective. This causes the users to respect the vehicle condition less than they would if they would own the car. Same applies for public transportation. As the users do not care for vehicle as much, they tend not to clean the vehicle after use or be as cautious of causing damage. The automatic detection will pinpoint the person responsible for property damage or littering, which switches the responsibility from the service provider to the user, as they will be billed for required maintenance due to their negligence.
The objectives of the MICROTECH LAB subproject within ANTITRASH are: the design, development and validation of systems based on microtechnologies for odor and bad smell detection with capacity to actuate on the neutralization of certain odors , which will ensure a good indoor air quality and environment for users in order to increase their attractiveness to sharing services. Those devices could also be used for bacteria or pollutants detection inside the vehicle, as well as to confirm trash disposal from users in order to assign responsibility.
The MicroTech Lab-INTEXTER-UPC subproject will closely interact with SEAT on the development and testing of new interior materials (i.e. plastic, metals and polymers), as well as on defining and testing microfluidic systems for smell and particles detection. All this will contribute to the reduction of cleaning and in-vehicle components replacement costs and will help to increase the final users travelling experience.
The consortium vision is that ANTITRASH contributes to a paradigm shift in the maintenance of shared vehicles from a regular basis to an optimal maintenance. The research experience by the consortium represents an optimum blending of the interdisciplinary knowledge needed to develop successful projects in the area of Shared vehicles.
