The Book of Ideas

44 Delegates… Of 19 Nationalities from… 14 Countries spent… 3 Days in Brussels… Attending 4 Workshops creating…21 Ideas for the Future forming…

The Book of Ideas

In June 2011…

1. Skills for the Future

2. Urban Communities Tomorrow

3. New Mobility Services

4. Future Technologies

Workshop Categories

Workshop 1:Skills for the Future

Want People? Use People!

Capturing talent isn’t just about matching jobs to qualifications – it’s also about people. Some of our delegates have started their careers in the industry and noticed that the system is very automated: Candidate CVs are uploaded straight to a database and get filtered invisibly. How could anyone show his or her individual flair and creativity this way? The team suggested that recruitment should get interactive again – enriched with social features and opportunities for face-to-face discussion. This dialogue will help recruiters find that magical creative spark in their candidates and also help job seekers to learn more about the company they’re looking to join.

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Scaling Hierarchies – an Express Elevator for Great Ideas

Big auto companies are necessarily large and complex, so young talent starting at the ground floor can find it hard to share their creative vision and get ideas heard.

Our delegates proposed creating shortcuts to the hierarchy, building in time and processes where individual’s creative ideas could be pitched to senior management. Ideas are always great, but our delegates mean business – auto companies will need to back this process with investment and engineering teams to select and develop the best proposals.

2

Parents Programme

Getting women into the engineering and automotive sectors remains a challenge, even while these industries commit to equal opportunities and roll out university outreach programmes. But why doesn’t this work? Maybe because by university it is too late to change the years of social conditioning that says that engineering isn’t for girls.

Our team suggested starting the intervention far earlier – with the parents of very young children. Parents are shown to exert the greatest influence on their children’s early attitudes and choices. The Parents Programme will see the industry and educators reach out to parents of girls to show them the opportunities available to both sexes – and that a spark of engineering genius in their girls can be kindled into tomorrow’s great women leaders.

3

Creating Communities at Work

Young people see that the worlds of work and our personal lives are coming together, with more people working flexible hours or from their homes. Our delegates aren’t afraid of this - it’s all part of life lived now. Still, they expect business to help people keep hold of their individuality and make a space for self-expression. With me-time and work-time overlapping, the social fabric of the office can be unlocked to achieve this. Our team proposed taking the networks that big enterprises use to share data and to communicate, and using these to create social networks that can unite people of similar interests and hobbies within organisations. Encouraging more personal pursuits alongside work will make for happier, more fulfilled, and loyal individuals.

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Engineering HeroYoung people need role models, but where are the heroes of the engineering world? Does the auto sector have an answer to Lady Gaga? Our delegates say there’s no reason why not!

The celebrities of industry are all too often the chief executives - lauded for being successful in business, but with technical successes talked of far less. Our team wants to turn this situation on its head through greater recognition for the superstar men and women that are transforming the industry through technical excellence. Our team was too modest to say this, but their plan would see tomorrow’s magazines, billboards and advertising campaigns starring people just like them.

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Workshop 1: Skills for the Future

Want People? Use People!

Scaling Hierarchies – an Express

Elevator for Great Ideas

Parents Programme

Creating Communities at Work

Engineering Hero

Workshop 2: Urban Communities Tomorrow

Societal Change

Sometimes saying that it can’t be done can be a good start. You can’t solve mobility challenges with just new types of cars. Or policy. Or public transport services. Our delegates say that you need it all to change, with each part of our interconnected transport system having to change together. This means changing our systems, attitudes and technology for personal, public and freight transport - together.

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Smart European Travel System

A key enabler for this integrated approach is a common system that can link together different modes of transport, and that is aware of how transport needs change at different times. This can alert users to issues in real time, making transport planning easier and cutting energy use and congestion.

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Use What We Have

Transport of goods is vital to our society and to Europe’s economies, but the time and energy cost of this needs to be reduced. One outcome of a linked multi-mode approach to transport is to spot under-used methods of moving goods, such as river networks, and use these for more commercial freight - helping to free up roads.

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Smarter GoodsOptimising the capacity of freight vehicles is a vital way to cut costs and traffic. Our team took inspiration from peer to peer social networks like eBay, where providers and buyers of freight services can be brought together. You want a cargo taken to Riga and there is someone else planning the same trip in your neighbourhood? Why not share the truck and save time money. Again, this peer-to-peer model can use the tricks of Web 2.0 - allowing service users to rate providers to build trust in the network.

9

The Last Mile Caterpillar

Small agile vehicles are often seen as an answer to mobility challenges. So too is greater use of public transport. Our delegates recognised that the two both have a role to play. Any form of public transport will suffer if users fear that they will be stranded at the last mile: People will still take their car.

The Last Mile Caterpillar takes both these problems on. Imagine a small two-person electric vehicle that is perfect for short last mile journeys. And then imagine that this vehicle joins a fast expressway and clicks on to a larger vehicle towing a longer ‘caterpillar’ of personal vehicles that covers distance at high speeds. Travellers enjoy the speed and passive ride of a train, with the privilege and privacy of personal transport. Like devices connected to a computer by USB cables, the smaller vehicles are charged by the Caterpillar en route, detaching with a full battery to finish the last mile hop. It can only work when everything is linked.

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Workshop 2: Urban Communities Tomorrow

Societal Change

The Last Mile Caterpillar

Use What We Have

Smart European Travel System

Smarter Goods

Workshop 3: New Mobility Services

Mobility RoamingWho really wants to own a car, van, bicycle, or horse? OK, so maybe people will always like horses. But new generations won’t want to be tied to a way of travel by what they own. They want to have a service that sets them free to get from A to B.

Public transport systems are already linking together multiple ways of travelling with a single payment option. An example is London’s Oystercard - a single contactless smartcard that can pay for buses, boats or trains. But let’s imagine that this idea goes further. With Mobility Roaming, our delegates imagine that planning a journey should be about the best way to travel - you say where you want to go and a smart routing system creates a seamless journey. Everything is planned, booked and paid for - mixing cars, trains or bicycles – whatever is quickest, greenest or cheapest. And this is a smart system remember – fed by live weather reports, it knows when it’s raining, tells you to avoid the walk and to catch a tram instead!

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A Place You May Like

Linked to Mobility Roaming, this idea starts with a question we often ask before we travel: Where shall we go? If we’re meeting a friend for dinner, our smart roaming system can tell us about good places convenient for everyone and maybe somewhere new that we have never visited before.

Thinking commercially, the team suggests that this could be sponsored too, but with total transparency so users can always see sponsored recommendations and make informed choices.

12

The Modular Motor

We don’t always need four seats -- or the ability to carry a washing machine. Sometimes, a car will only need to carry one person and sometimes it’s the whole family. Designing cars around lives that change shape is the aim of the Modular Motor. You need to carry more goods? Add on more wheels to stretch the vehicle. Not taking the dog to the office? So remove that pet compartment. The idea is to carry what you need, to stay lean and light and to use less energy and road space. As well as for private cars, this idea can again be linked to the Mobile Roaming concept - with modules added on as part of an integrated transport-as-a-service system.

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SafetyA smart system that plans your route from A to B, can be enhanced by personal connected devices – computers and smartphones - adding new systems for safety that can monitor journeys in real time and notify others of your progress. Don’t worry if you’re driving and unable to call and say you’re late - your social network can pick this up and let your friends know. Parents can also rest assured that their children are where they should be.

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Privacy These systems should be there to support us. With ever more ability to track our movements in real time, our delegates agree that privacy, transparency and individual control should stay at the heart of a mobility service. Opt-outs should be provided to help us decide when we want to be connected and when we need our privacy.

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Workshop 3:New Mobility Services

Privacy

The Modular Motor

Safety

A Place You May Like

Mobility Roaming

Workshop 4:Future Technologies

FlexLanes

Things change fast on the roads - traffic builds up as people head to their offices, emergencies block critical routes. FlexLanes imagines that the road itself can change as fast, through road markings that can shift dynamically - creating new lanes for denser traffic, or making paths for emergency vehicles. How could this happen? Through intelligent road surfaces that could display whatever markings needed, or perhaps through in-vehicle head-up displays. And how could vehicles fit to narrower lanes - why not imagine shrinking vehicles that can talk to roads and adopt a narrow configuration to suit?

16

See-Through Vision

With a significant volume of accidents and fatalities caused when overtaking long vehicles, our team took on the problem of how to make passing larger or slower vehicles safer. The see-through vehicle sounds like magic, but it’s about smart technology applied creatively. With more cameras being used on vehicles for maneuvering and safety, a view ahead from a slower vehicle could be projected immediately to vehicles behind it. But how would you make the screen work? Why not project this holographically in the over-taking vehicle? Taking the vision further, our team sees an application in making mountain roads safer, projecting potential dangers around the next bend to drivers in real time.

17

Dashboard / Touch-board

Today we are talking to our computers and phones by touch - tomorrow our car dashboard will speak this language as well. Our team worried that with more features and data available to the driver, the inside of a car is starting to resemble the cockpit of a jetplane! It is information overload, and it’s stressful and distracting.

Our team re-imagined the whole dashboard as a customisable interactive touchscreen, where the driver can choose how to receive alerts and where controls should be placed to be easiest to use. A clean, intuitive software interface, it can also be personalised, with skins, apps, and widgets to show the information needed by drivers and passengers when and how they want it.

19

Fun Efficiency

Today’s generation are always on, always social, and - with daily lives lived through online personas - increasingly in a world enhanced by a virtually augmented reality. Real life can also be a game. Our team sees this as a way to encourage sustainable driving. Each vehicle has an on-board game that shows and rewards greener travel. Here’s the good bit: The scores are linked to our social networks so we can share and compete with our friends. Driving is and will continue to be fun - but here the joy is also in driving smarter rather than just faster.

18

Personalised Adaptive Safety System (PASS)

Vehicles are built around our bodies - shaped for comfort and safety. Tomorrow’s vehicles could take this further, sensing how our bodies are feeling and performing and adapting control and safety systems to adapt to our state. Too many accidents occur through driver fatigue or poor reflexes, but making vehicles more sensitive could be the answer.

With PASS, an intelligent steering wheel detects the driver’s heart rate and stress levels, while eye tracking monitors our alertness. In response the car can dampen speed or increase sensitivity of control systems or the nature of driver alerts.

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When our cars know how we feel, they should probably also get to know who we are, too. PASS will remember who we are and how we drive, with iris recognition sensors that help the car match its settings and driving style and adjust to fit our unique profile. With a generation of aging drivers, this level of adaption will be essential to keep older people mobile for longer while still staying safe.

The Feel the Road Seat

Increasing our awareness of and connection with the road is crucial to safety. It also makes for a more enjoyable drive!

The Feel the Road seat gets to the bottom of this problem, helping to engage more senses when we drive, and balancing out an over-reliance on what we see. As the steering wheel is turned as the car corners, the driver’s seat inclines to offer better feedback of his actions. The car tells the driver how far to turn - when the rate of turn matches the bend, the seat is level, but oversteer can immediately be warned of through a more extreme angle.

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Workshop 4: Future Technologies

FlexLanes

The Feel the Road Seat

Fun Efficiency

Personalised Adaptive Safety

System

Dashboard / Touch-board

See-Through Vision

1. Want People? Use People!2. Scaling hierarchies – an Express Elevator

for Great Ideas 3. Parents Programme4. Creating communities at work5. Engineering Hero

Workshop 1: Skills for the Future

Workshop 2: Urban Communities Tomorrow

1. Societal Change 2. Smart European Travel System3. Use What We Have4. Smarter Goods5. The Last Mile Caterpillar

1. Mobility Roaming2. A place you may like3. The Modular Motor4. Safety5. Privacy

Workshop 3: New Mobility Services

Workshop 4: Future Technologies

1. FlexLanes 2. See-Through Vision3. Fun Efficiency4. Dashboard / Touch-board5. Personalised Adaptive Safety System

(PASS) 6. The Feel the Road Seat

Summary of Ideas