Summary:
A Swedish SME is developing an innovation for mobility safety. They are initially focusing on a solution to make unattended railway crossings more safe based on existing accessible data and a system that will communicate with actors in traffic. This innovation will be cheaper, easier and faster to install than conventional safety solutions for level crossings. The partner sought is a European technology company with experience of developing, manufacturing, and distributing ICT-products.
Description:
Germany has about 8000 unattended railway crossings. Sweden has about 3500 unattended railway crossings. In Sweden approximately 20 people die every year in accidents on these crossings. These unattended railway level crossings and this type of intersection, have an increased risk of accidents. Not only tragic deaths but also enormous damage and downtime in an important infrastructure and critical transport chain, meaning not only the risk of unnecessery losses of lives but also huge financial losses and delays on the railways.
In the future autonomous and digitized remote controlled vehicles are expected to operate side by side with humans and other manually operated machines, requirements for safety and cost-effectiveness as well as reliable and safe measures will be required.
To solve the risks and problems with railway crossings the SME has deveoped a concept and developing an innovation based on using data from existing streamed accessible data from road users in the vicinity of the level crossing, such as GNSS, geofencing. Furthermore the apparatus will have sensors installed that can also supply the system with data on detected approaching traffic. The data fusion that will be developed, with a redundancy character, will make it possible to obtain and communicate the necessary data for increased traffic safety at level crossings. Information can be communicated via so-called cloud services to the various road users' navigation services, onboard systems or the like, for example the GPS-navigator in cars, smartphones or other connected devices and the built-in communication systems of the trains. The innovation will warn all level crossing actors independently of each other in more layers with multilateral warnings.
The target customers for this innovation are mainly authorities for train traffic on national or regional level, for example: Trafikverket (Sweden), SL (Sweden), Banedanmark (Denmark), Deutsche Bahn (Germany), Canadian National Railway (Canada), etc.
The innovation concept will probably also be able to apply in other traffic or mobility infrastructural scenarios, like the mining industry, on airports and other areas where automated vehicles will be active.
The company has initially applied for European patent protection for the product and concept.
Type (e.g. company, R&D institution…), field of industry and Role of Partner Sought:
The client is looking to find a partner in Europe the coming six months. The partner sought should be from the industry and interested in developing the innovation together with the SME.
The partner should have extensive experience and competence within ICT or IoT-product develpment and/or experience working with products within the mobility sector (experience from the railway indstry specifically is a plus). The optimal partner is a technology company with experience of designing, developing, manufacturing, and distributing technologies focused on industry, infrastructure, mobility, safety.
The partner should be interested in this opportunity for cooperation all the way from product development to acceleration of the commercailization of the innovation. The partner will be offerd to invest in the concept in return with the opportunity to become a equity partner or starting a joint venture together.
Several types of partners and partnership agreements can be considered for the SME; joint venture, license, manufacturing, techical cooperation; it depends on what the potential partner can offer for expertise areas and on which level of commitment they want to have in the partnership.
Potential partners interested in research cooperation to apply for innovation projects where the product can be developed will also be considerd.
Stage of Development:
Concept stage
IPR Status:
Patent(s) applied for but not yet granted
Comments Regarding IPR Status:
External code:
TOSE20210610001
