RoboCab – Autonomous vehicles for carsharing and taxi fleets

The research project RoboCab is dealing with future autonomous vehicles for carsharing and taxi fleets. The aim is to investigate with the help of social-empirical methods if mobility offers of such kind are attractive for users and which requirements the vehicles have to meet.

Research approach

The first step will be to identify possible groups of adopters and trendsetters who might find the concepts of autonomous driving attractive and for who this idea offers an additional benefit. The extent to which these concepts are accepted in Germany will be determined with the help of in-depth interviews – an international sample will be interviewed by standardized surveys. The results thus obtained will be used for further developing car sharing and car fleet concepts that include autonomous vehicles. Expert interviews will serve to assess the most important effects the use of autonomous vehicles will have for traffic and urban ecology.

Background

The process that leads towards an ever stronger digitalization and automation of traffic is fast paced. But so far, individual technical key components are only inserted into mostly less efficient, conventional vehicles. For a traffic transformation that meets the requirements of sustainable mobility, intelligent utilization concepts of novel and efficient vehicles have to catch on. Autonomous vehicles as part of car sharing and taxi fleets are  part of this development. So far though, research on autonomous driving has strongly focused on the technological progress. Societal and user specific aspects have up to now not been considered. So in order to obtain a comprehensive picture, this research project investigates peoples’ demands on future-orientated mobility systems which include autonomous vehicles.

Cooperation partner

Fraunhofer IAO, Stuttgart (Project lead)

Funding

The Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BVVI) is funding the acceptance study RoboCab in correspondence with the funding guideline “Automated and Interlinked Driving”.