The project aims to increase the comfort and safety perception of passengers. Together with passengers, the partners are developing ethical, passenger-oriented solutions tailored specifically to user groups such as wheelchair users, tourists, and students. IAV brings its extensive experience in automotive engineering and algorithm development to advance the technology for highly automated shuttles and revolutionize public transport.

Can you tell us about your general experience with public transport in your city?
Public transport in Chemnitz is well-developed and includes a network of trams, buses, and regional trains operated by Chemnitzer Verkehrs-AG (CVAG) and Verkehrsverbund Mittelsachsen (VMS). The city offers reliable and frequent services, making it convenient for residents and visitors to navigate the city and its surroundings. However, there is room for improvements to address special user needs and for innovative solutions for suburban areas. Highly automated shuttles are particularly promising for enhancing the flexibility of public transport services and addressing challenges like the shortage of bus drivers.

Why is a project like OptiPEx necessary?
As we move towards the future of highly automated shuttle fleets, it is essential to investigate special user needs and develop intelligent solutions to overcome identified barriers. OptiPEx's goal reflects this topic and will promote the acceptance, perceived safety, and comfort of automated shuttles and other public transport services. Interdisciplinary cooperation ensures that the current state of research, competencies in technological development in autonomous driving, as well as public transport and industry needs, are combined when developing solutions. Only the collaboration of all parties involved will lead to solutions that are widely adaptable to current public transport services to increase comfort and safety.

What role does IAV play in the OptiPEx project, and how does the company contribute to its success?
IAV possesses extensive expertise in the development of highly automated vehicles, R&D projects in the automotive sector, and support for series production. At IAV, we have experts in all project-related topics, such as Human Factors in automotive, In-Cabin Monitoring, user-specific solutions in public transport and vehicle integration. We will analyze passenger and stakeholder requirements for safer and more comfortable, highly automated public transport. Additionally, we will advance vehicle technologies by integrating AI algorithms for In-Cabin Monitoring to detect scenarios where passengers require special assistance. Furthermore, we will provide one of the three living labs by integrating and testing OptiPEx solutions in a highly automated shuttle with potential passengers and evaluating them.

What does a successful contribution to the project look like for your organization?
Our goal is to provide solutions that make passengers of our highly automated shuttles feel safe and comfortable, especially those with special needs.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for the project?
I think the biggest challenge for OptiPEx lies in the development of AI algorithms for anomaly detection, in-cabin monitoring, or target group detection. For a great solution, you need lots of well-labeled, sometimes sensitive data such as video and audio recordings. We aim to tackle this challenge by utilizing open-source data, our own recordings, and cutting-edge methods to reduce the need for training data.

What does your organization hope to achieve between now and month 18 of the project?
The first 18 months will lead to a clearer understanding of user needs and to important initial technological developments as well as initial test results. Regarding user needs, we want to focus on the special needs of passengers when no driver will be available on, e.g., future buses; what problems should be addressed and how passengers could be supported. Meanwhile, the development of algorithms for in-cabin monitoring will proceed with the aim of identifying abnormal situations in public transport that will trigger OptiPEx solutions in the vehicle or infrastructure.

Can you describe OptiPEx in three words?
Three words are not much, so let’s try the German way of putting words together Innovative, user-adaptive public-transport-solutions.

The OptiPEx project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101146513.