By car, train, and cargo bike
IT for the mobile generation
IT for the mobile generation – this is a discipline that a number of companies are tackling in Adlershof. Ideas for the mobility of the future include precision navigation to the nearest metre on forest tracks and in factories, pan-European ticketing systems, and the iBullitt cargo bike.
Forest vehicles in local wooded areas can rely on the “Forestry” navigator. Unlike the usual satnavs available on the market, this development from the company Logiball also visualizes forest tracks and farm roads. With its head office in Herne, Westphalia, Logiball runs a branch in Berlin Adlershof where employees take care of the so called map engineering. Here, half a dozen cartographers and IT engineers program map data into software developed specially by Logiball.
“We can incorporate any desired detail in the navigation,” explained Logiball Managing Director Roger Müller. For instance, Logiball navigation systems can visualize subterranean gas and power supply lines, inland waterways, or routes at factories and airports – and navigate the user to these within the metre.
IT for the mobile generation – this is a discipline that is also the specialisation of VinarIT, a company that moved into its second home in Adlershof in mid-January. The main reason behind this move was the vicinity to customers and to the key sectors represented by e.g. Deutsche Bahn, Siemens, and Bombardier. “Yet also the good infrastructure and the vicinity to institutes of higher education are important to us,” added Michael Zylla, Managing Partner.
When, in 2017, passengers in Munich board the ICE for the new high speed section via Leipzig and leave the train in Berlin less than four hours later, they will have to thank VinarIT. This company was responsible for the electronic administration of the many thousands of documents that were generated during the development of the European Train Control System for this section. “Should there be an accident on this section, these documents will provide key evidence,” explained Zylla.
The next challenge will be a pan-European ticketing system for rail customers. “We have everything we need for a project of this kind.”
How the mobility of courier services can be optimized in conurbations is currently the research field of Johannes Gruber at the Institute of Transport Research, an establishment of the German Aerospace Center DLR. The geographer estimates that in some urban areas up to 85 % of courier trips by car could have been made e.g. with innovative iBullitt cargo bikes fitted with an auxiliary electric motor. Since last summer, forty of these cargo bikes have been taking the roads in Berlin and seven other cities in Germany.
Gruber will be analysing a million items of job data a year that courier companies will be supplying. Initial results are expected in the spring. At the outset, Gruber had already discovered that half of all courier trips in the participating cities are under 4.7 kilometres – when bicycles have far greater advantages than motor vehicles.
By Mirko Heinemann for Adlershof Special