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"If we can push transportation in this direction – very light vehicles – it’s a major win for the environment"

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Unlike Google's April Fool's Day video (watch below) that showed a self-driving bicycle navigating its way around Amsterdam, the work being done by University of Washington Bothell professor Tyler Folsom is no joke.

Folsom and crew are trying to ensure bicycles are included in the movement toward self-driving vehicles. The UW Bothell team is building a self-driving tricycle that can travel at speeds up to 30 MPH with a 15-mile range. The team claims the self-driving bicycle "could get riders from A to B faster than a self-driving car, and at a tenth of the cost. Not only that, the self-driving bike helps combat climate change."

Folsom tells Robotics Trends the self-driving bicycle is based on a stack of five Arduinos with no operating system. The open-source documentation and C/C++ code can be found on GitHub. The self-driving bicycle has object recognition that's based on an array of sonar range finders. Here's more from Folsom on how the self-driving bicycle sees its environment:

"Localization combines GPS with dead reckoning. It uses a fuzzy filter to reconcile the two estimated positions. Dead reckoning is based on speedometer and magnetometer. In the future, localization may be extended to include accelerometer, optical odometry and visual lane edge detection. A Raspberry Pi handles the visual tasks.

"To get from point A to point B, an Arduino reads an SD card with digital maps and selects the one with the closest latitude and longitude. That map is a directed graph connecting intersections. The bike computes the shortest path to the road network, then finds the shortest route to the destination."

In the video atop this page, the self-driving bicycle executes a "circle test" outdoors for the first time. Making the self-driving bicycle go, turn and stop is the first step toward higher-level, expanded paths, says Folsom, who adds that the self-driving bicycle uses the minimum amount of computational power.
A self-driving bicycle being tested inside the lab at University of Washington Bothell. (Credit: UW Bothell)
"We're using things much less powerful than a smartphone. Part of the concept is that you don't have to spend as much money as the big car companies are spending, "says Folsom. "My contention is you don't need all that much processing power to make autonomy happen."

The self-driving bicycle is just a prototype at this point, but it recently received a $75,000 grant from Amazon Catalyst that has allowed Folsom to form a small team. Folsom says the goal is to keep the cost of each self-driving bicycle under $10,000. That's a hefty price tag for consumers to spend on a bike, but Folsom points out it could make a good transit alternative as 100 self-driving bikes would cost the same a $1 million bus. So if this project gets off the ground, consumers might not be the main target.
Google's April Fool's Day joke introducing a self-driving bicycle in the Netherlands.
"The big thing for me is the effect this could have on global warming. If we can push transportation in this direction - very light vehicles - it's a major win for the environment," says Folsom, who rides an electric bike and drives an electric car himself. "I want to have the technology that lets people make that choice if we decide, yes, by the way, survival would be a nice thing."

Would you purchase or ride a self-driving bicycle? You'd lose all the health benefits that come with pedaling a bicycle, but this could certainly cut down on getting stuck in traffic, if you have a short commute, and help the environment. Either way, an interesting project to keep an eye on.

On a related note, you might remember an incident we covered about a cyclist's interesting encounter with an indecisive Google self-driving Lexus SUV while riding in Austin, Texas. Gregg Tatum, an avid cyclist who rides about 6,000 miles per year, shared his story with us:

"Recently, near the end of one of my rides, I was approaching an intersection in my neighborhood that is signed as a four-way stop. As I slowed and prepared to stop, a vehicle entered the same intersection from the street to my left. The white Lexus SUV was unusual as it was adorned with a prominent roof-top camera as well as a variety of other sensors attached to various parts of the car. Closer inspection revealed that it was labeled as a 'Google Self-driving Car.'

"The car arrived at the stop line a fraction of a second before I did and had the legal right-of-way. Not wanting to unclip my shoes from the pedals, I performed a maneuver called a track-stand in which a rider comes to a stop and then simply balances the bike without putting a foot down. As I waited for the car to proceed, I noticed that there were two occupants inside that appeared to be observers/testers.

Related: 8 Reasons Self-Driving Cars Are a Cyclist's Best Friend

"The car remained motionless for several seconds and I continued to maintain my balance without moving. As the car finally inched forward, I was forced to rock the handlebars to hold my position. Apparently, this motion was detected by one of the sensors and the car stopped abruptly. I held the bike in balance and waited for another several seconds and the cycle repeated itself ... the car inched forward, I shifted my weight and re-positioned the bars and the car stopped. We did this little dance three separate times and the car was not even halfway through the intersection. I noticed at one point that the testers were laughing and apparently typing code into a terminal to 'teach' the vehicle how to deal with the situation.

"The car finally rolled on and I proceeded on my ride ... it was an interesting experience and I noticed that I actually felt safer dealing with a robotically-operated vehicle than one with a human driver."

Now, Google's self-driving cars do have patented technology for cyclist hand detection. The car's sensors will notice a cyclist among other objects and vehicles on the road. It then measures the distance between the cyclist's hand and head to decide whether a cyclist is turning or stopping. The algorithm will also look at the angle at which the cyclist's elbow is bending, and the size and shape of the cyclist's hands, arms and head.

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Self-Driving Bicycle Hopes to Change Public Transit - Robotics Trends

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Unlike Google's April Fool's Day video (watch below) that showed a self-driving bicycle navigating its way around Amsterdam, the work being done by University of Washington Bothell professor Tyler Folsom is no joke. Folsom and crew are trying to ensure bicycles are included in the movement toward self-driving vehicles.

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Responds to real time demand by picking up travellers who have requested pick up (Abdullah 2017).

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Skapar mindre trafik (mindre utsläpp) och frigör ytor som kan användas till t.ex. cykelvägar och minskar trängseln i trafiken (KlimatSmart 2017).

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"Den samhällsekonomiska lönsamheten för investeringar i cykelvägar är ofta 3-5 kronor per satsad krona" (Schantz 2010)

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Hur mobilitet tänjer gränserna till de områden man kan utforska genom att erbjuda jorden från ett nytt perspektiv.

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Why we go

I really hope that there will be millions of kids all over the world who will be captivated and inspired about the possibility of them going to space one day."

- Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Galactic

Become an Astronaut

This year, we'll be making a limited number of tickets available for future spaceflights. Take the leap with us as we get one step closer to filling the world with astronauts.

The Experience

Spaceport America

Spread across 27 square miles, Spaceport America is our center of flight operations, and the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

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I really hope that there will be millions of kids all over the world who will be captivated and inspired about the possibility of them going to space one day." - Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Galactic This year, we'll be making a limited number of tickets available for future spaceflights.

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Den här artikeln beskriver hur trenden "on-demand mobility" växer genom att vi använder oss mer av delat ägarskap (t.ex. genom bilpooler) och att behovet av att äga en egen bil kanske minskar i framtiden.

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We recently had the opportunity to participate in two important conferences focused on the future: one on the on-demand economy ( On Demand Economy 2015) and the other on mobile communications ( Rutberg Future Mobile 2015).

While each conference covered a range of fascinating topics, if taken together, one can develop from the conversations and presentations a clear picture of the future of mobility. This future, creating both great opportunities and economic dislocations, is being driven by established tech players as well as a new generation of innovative startups.

We see three key trends shaping mobility, both personal and commercial: the move to on-demand mobility, the impact of driverless vehicles and the growth of electric vehicles.

Together, these trends will bring about a future that is safer, cheaper, offers more choices and is more resource efficient.

In an early sign of the changes to come, last month it was reported that Uber's CEO is planning to buy 500,000 of Tesla's autonomous vehicles as soon as they are available. Why is Uber willing to make this bet, and why are the plans of these companies so important to the future of mobility?

Let's examine each of the trends in turn.

On-Demand Mobility

On-demand mobility is without doubt one of the most important trends in transportation and in the global economy today. And by this we mean mobility (moving people, goods or services) based on a mobile app that allows for ease of scheduling and payment.

The recent and ongoing exponential growth of ride sharing, car sharing and last-mile delivery services is just the beginning of a global shift away from personal vehicle ownership to a shared, on-demand model.

According to the Economist, car sharing alone will reduce car ownership at an estimated rate of one shared vehicle replacing 15 owned vehicles.

The ability of the leaders of the new on-demand mobility market to build trust with key stakeholders - consumers, regulators, insurers, investors - is essential to their success.

The cost of vehicle ownership, increasing commute times, limitations on infrastructure expansion, the need to conserve resources and cut greenhouse emissions and even the change in the relationship between the millennial generation and automobiles are all contributing to the growth in on-demand mobility. So much so that we believe within three-five years most miles driven in urban settings globally will be on shared platforms (ride share, last-mile delivery, car share and public transit).

That may seem shocking to those of us in the West, but consider what is happening in the two most populous nations on earth, India and China. At present, only about 5 percent of Indians own a personal vehicle, and already the roads are jammed almost to the point of impassibility. The same is happening in China.

Yet both nations have a rapidly growing middle class with money to spend. It will be impossible for them to replicate the current U.S. model of car ownership, so on-demand mobility will serve the mobility needs of the hundreds of millions of newly affluent Indians and Chinese, without personal vehicle ownership. This is why growth in on-demand mobility in India and China has already eclipsed that of North America and Europe.

Driverless Vehicles

What immediately comes to mind when talk turns to autonomous vehicles is Google's high-profile efforts to develop a driverless car or, perhaps, rumors that Apple plans to create a competing vehicle. They are not alone. Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and others are all working on autonomous vehicles. The first such cars are expected to be available to consumers in the next few years. Driverless trucks operating on public roads are a few years further out, but are definitely coming.

Yet the imperative for an autonomous vehicle is not being driven by consumer demand, but by a powerful economic force central to the success of the on-demand mobility market. This is why Uber is investing heavily in developing autonomous vehicles: Eliminating the driver in the on-demand model radically changes the economics to the considerable benefit of the service provider.

Under Uber's current business model, approximately 60-80 percent of revenues stay with the car owner. Driverless vehicles would put most of that revenue into the coffers of the on-demand services providers.

Based on the fact that on-demand mobility companies are highly motivated from a profit perspective to develop driverless cars and trucks, we can expect that over the next 5-15 years, autonomous vehicles will profoundly alter the mobility landscape.

The imperative for an autonomous vehicle is not being driven by consumer demand, but by a powerful economic force central to the success of the on-demand mobility market.

In addition to the very real and very significant impact on transportation economics along national transportation routes, we should expect the safety of driverless vehicles to become a paramount area of focus and regulatory scrutiny. After all, roads are filled with many tons of steel hurtling around at 75 miles per hour, which can get really dangerous really fast if proper measures aren't taken.

If you speak to most actuaries - the math and stats experts responsible for quantifying and measuring risk at insurance companies - they'll tell you that currently, risk is for the most part measured via DMV driving records and demographic signals. Different segments of the population tend to cluster into similar risk buckets.

Clearly, this approach does not work for autonomous vehicles. We need a new risk-monitoring standard, a driving-analytics benchmark that is largely behavioral. The emphasis here is on "behavioral" as it is meaningless to use demographic criteria for safe driving evaluations in case of autonomous vehicles.

Electric Vehicles

Stalled for years, with global auto companies given them little more than lip service, advances in battery, control and electric motor technologies - coupled with consumer concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and gas price volatility - are finally driving electric vehicles into the mainstream auto market. Recent entrants to the market, such as Tesla, have shown Detroit's Big Three that electric vehicles can be sexy, fast, safe and convenient - not to mention environmentally friendly and resource efficient.

Here again, it is the on-demand mobility market that will be a significant catalyst of the shift to electric vehicles. The continued explosive growth in the demand for on-demand services and the expansion of autonomous vehicles creates the need for a transportation platform that is reliable and cost-effective to operate and maintain. Electric motors are far more dependable than internal combustion engines; they require significantly less maintenance, have much longer life expectancies and are far cheaper to operate.

When you think about a vehicle that is manufactured with on-demand usage in mind, it will not be sitting in a garage 96 percent of the time like privately owned, human-driven vehicles. Rather it will be designed to remain in operation 24/7/365, and the most economical solution for this usage profile is electric (assuming battery swapping during off-peak hours).

As the on-demand mobility market dramatically increases demand for electric vehicles, that demand will put downward pressure on the price of such vehicles (and the battery and electric motor technologies that scale them) while driving improvements in performance. This sets up a virtuous cycle that will rapidly expand the number of electric vehicles on our roads.

On-demand mobility is without doubt one of the most important trends in transportation and in the global economy today.

While initially we'll see an increase in hybrid vehicle adoption for the on-demand segment, the second generation of vehicles will be quite different. These vehicles aren't today's electric vehicles. The new generation of vehicles designed for on-demand services will not only be optimized for continuous operation and cheap maintenance, but also for the efficiency and convenience of the payload (whether passenger or goods).

We imagine electric vehicles designed with passengers in mind (private modular passenger pods, Wi-Fi, "first class" seating, etc.) that not only drive themselves but also stop for rapid charging/switching of batteries and communicate with one another via mesh technology to optimize routes and per-mile utilization.

Conclusions

We stand on the threshold of what can realistically be described as the largest and most important shift in transportation in a century. The benefits will be enormous: An 80+ percent reduction in the cost of transportation. Reduced pollution. Reduced stress and road rage. A dramatic decrease in accidents and traffic deaths. Gaining back time lost to commuting - and the associated increase in productivity. Freeing up two lanes on many urban roads by eliminating parked cars. Even the reclaiming of the space allocated to home garages.

This future is being driven by the nexus of three significant trends. Each is important in and of itself, but combined they create an unstoppable force for change.

As with most significant changes to the way we live our lives, safety and trust and data are key to enabling the potential of on-demand mobility. Consider the adoption of electricity in the late 1900s or of the automobile in the 1920s or the airplane in the late 1940s - all were contingent upon building public and regulatory trust in these technologies.

Today, ride-sharing services such as Uber, Lyft and many others are under intense scrutiny in communities across America and around the world. The ability of the leaders of the new on-demand mobility market to build trust with key stakeholders - consumers, regulators, insurers, investors - is essential to their success. Deploying technologies that independently monitor and improve road safety are an essential part of creating the trust needed to accelerate the future of mobility.

Featured Image: SP-Photo/Shutterstock

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We recently had the opportunity to participate in two important conferences focused on the future: one on the on-demand economy ( On Demand Economy 2015) and the other on mobile communications ( Rutberg Future Mobile 2015). While each conference covered a range of fascinating topics, if taken together, one can develop from the conversations and presentations a clear picture of the future of mobility.

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"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that over 90% of car crashes involve human error" (Wang 2015, p. 1).

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Exempel på områden som det designas för:
- Kollektivtrafiken
- Personbilar
- Självkörande fordon
- Miljövänliga lösningar
- Transport för "urban areas"
- On-demand mobility och "as-needed basis"

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Phill Seagram and Mika Becktor and Elie Ahovi and Ti Chang and Carla Diana and Keith Doležel

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Industrial designers predict the future of transportation in 50 years

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We asked designers to envision travel in 2065

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Exempel på visionen om ett supersnabbt transportmedel som samtidigt är bra för miljön.

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Hyperloop Transportation Technologies | HTT

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Hyperloop Transportation Technologies | HTT

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The original Hyperloop. Founded in 2013, we are over 600 engineers and technologists building the next breakthrough in transportation. Join us!

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Den här artikeln handlar om hur digitaliseringen kan effektivisera frakt, transport och logistik för att skapa en förbättrad kundresa från beställning till leverans. T.ex. genom ökad transparens samt bättre metoder för att automatisera färdplaner.

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Introduction: The last mile
Monique needs a new lens for a photo shoot tomorrow morning. Scrambling, she looks for one online and finds a good choice from a reputable retailer. But she doesn't work regular hours, and her apartment is in a high-rise with no doorman. A "Sorry We Missed You!" slip is not an option. As Monique browses, the retailer's software is automatically looking across its inventory in distribution centers, fulfillment centers, stores, and trucks while dynamically incorporating transit costs from parcel carriers, rate bureaus, and its private fleet. Through real-time scenario analysis, the retailer identifies that a lens is in a truck on its way to a store near Monique's default shipping address, and it could be efficiently diverted. At the online checkout, Monique is presented with two shipping options: standard two-day shipping through a parcel carrier's network or same-day shipping to a self-serve smart locker. Since her photo shoot is in the morning, Monique selects the expedited smart-locker option. As soon as Monique clicks "Buy," instructions are cascaded throughout the network to seamlessly enable the delivery. As the truck containing Monique's lens is being unloaded at the store, the receiving agent is notified to set aside the item for high-priority delivery. The agent packages the lens and adds a smart label to the box so that it can be tracked through the cloud. In parallel, the retailer's algorithm dynamically matches its high-priority delivery needs with available capacity in the market through an online platform. An independent transportation company accepted Monique's delivery through the platform-it has vans in the area making other deliveries. Later that day, a small, electric van arrives to pick up Monique's lens and other high-priority deliveries from the store. As the items are being loaded into the van, custody is tracked through the cloud so the retailer-and Monique-have visibility into the location of the lens in real time. As the van rolls away from the store, the most efficient route is dynamically calculated based on drop-offs and forecasted traffic conditions. When the van arrives at the assigned smart locker-owned by yet another company-the driver places Monique's lens in a particular compartment using a unique code. After the locker receives Monique's package, and a number of others, it moves to a location near Monique's default shipping address, since there are a number of customers picking up packages in that area. Monique is notified on her smartphone that her lens is ready for pickup. On her way home that evening, she swings by the locker. The order code that gives her access to her compartment is on her phone; a few hours later, a different code on a different phone will open the same compartment for someone else's transaction.
Shipping and the future of mobility

To get Monique's specialty lens from a moving truck to her hands in under 24 hours, the lens didn't ride on a large delivery truck through a static transportation network. It was delivered through a dynamic network that flexes based on capacity and demand. And most of the innovation in this scenario happened within a short radius of Monique's home. The factory, distribution center, and freight that got her package across thousands of miles have all seen their share of new thinking. But for carriers battling the bottom-line effects of fuel and labor prices, it's that fragmented time- and labor-intensive last mile that seems to carry a truckload of promise.

This article explores emerging trends within the transportation ecosystem and provides a framework for thinking about how digitization and new asset models could challenge existing business models. Along the way, it offers critical guidance to help both industry incumbents and new entrants determine where to place bets in the future of mobility. For those whose livelihoods depend on moving goods, the landscape is challenging, but it may also be a fertile field for the kind of leading-edge thinking that can turn complexity into opportunity.

An ecosystem in transit(ion)

Today's transportation ecosystem is covering more miles with fewer vehicles and reaping the benefits of persistently low fuel prices. But pressures are appearing on the horizon.

Additionally, analysts expect online sales to continue to grow as a share of overall retail sales, driving growth in the number of goods that would need to navigate the complexities of the last mile. This could put pressure on the last-mile providers to move an increasing volume of goods through the network. Additionally, an increase in online sales would generate an uptick in returns, meaning that the last-mile networks of tomorrow will need to be optimized for both delivery and pick-up, while handling a greater volume of goods.

When looking at an individual delivery, fuel and wages make up most of the cost, and because those are highly influenced by prevailing market forces, carriers typically have minimal control over those costs (see figure 1). The recent dip in crude oil prices has reduced the cost of a key input for the industry. Indeed, carriers have usually been able to turn volatility into profit: When fuel prices drop, margins expand, and when fuel prices rise, those increases usually get passed on to customers as a surcharge. But that pass-through isn't absolute, and low oil prices likely won't last forever. Indeed, low oil prices can even reduce transportation volumes for carriers within or adjacent to the energy industry, so they are not necessarily a boon to all.

Breaking down the delivery journey
A typical package's journey can be broken down into three phases: the first mile, middle mile, and last mile. While the first mile of an item's trip usually takes it from a production facility to a warehouse, and the middle mile then takes it from that warehouse to a distribution hub (usually including the long haul that accounts for most of the actual distance), the last mile is where large shipments of goods atomize into hundreds or thousands of individual deliveries, each with its own route, location, and timing. Until now, major carriers have used big infrastructure investments and economies of scale to dominate this environment. But we expect the ways in which goods move about to change. New technologies and market dynamics look poised to reshape every stage of a product's journey-especially the last mile.

Traffic report: tech and social trends expected to shape the new reality

Against this backdrop, the transportation ecosystem faces new pressures from multiple directions: Most customers want more options while digitization makes more possible, new delivery concepts are possible in urban areas where destinations and recipients are concentrated, asset sharing may change the calculus of "ownership," and alternative vehicle types may alter the ways in which time and labor influence the bottom line. Ultimately, these trends will likely affect stakeholders across the ecosystem (see figure 2).

Changing customer expectations

Consumers' expectations for shipping are rising: For example, a 2016 Deloitte study found that most consider "fast shipping" to be within two days, while just a year earlier most said it was within three or four days. Even as customers' expectations have increased, though, their willingness to pay for fast shipping has fallen, with 64 percent unwilling to pay anything extra for two-day shipping. And from the consumer's point of view, all miles-first, middle, last-are equal. They just want it NOW.

As the balance of sales has moved from brick-and-mortar to online, the demands on the transportation network have shifted, making shipping more complex. Where a single truck once moved a large load from a distribution center to a single retail location, the same volume of goods may now travel the last mile on many trucks-each of which may be less than full-with less predictable routing to stores, smart lockers, and individual homes.

Or not homes. While many of these trends are most pronounced with consumers, businesses are beginning to ask for similar value creation in B2B transactions. One survey found that in Canada, nearly half of all businesses that receive less-than-full truckload freight service are now asking for specialized or expedited deliveries to meet their operational needs.

Digitization

Barcode scanners have been in use for years. Freight companies are no strangers to the use of IT. And connectivity is at their core-it's no coincidence that telegraph lines originally ran along stagecoach and rail routes, or that truckers relied on CB radios long before smartphones made instantaneous two-way communication blasé. But today, all these forces-sensors, computing power, and the ability to connect-are coming together with unprecedented power.

Having committed to such a large role for data, carriers could find it more and more necessary to maintain the ability to collect and make sense of it. If yesterday's version of digitization measured route efficiency and increased preventative maintenance effectiveness, today's version is beginning to monitor individual operators' driving styles and the way they contribute to things such as tire wear.

The dollars in the details
Even with today's technology, digitization offers quantifiable benefits for trucking:

One company was able to save $1.3 million in annual fuel costs across its 1,000-vehicle fleet by identifying available trucks and adapting the routes of all vehicles.

Testing shows that telematics can reduce crash rates by 20 percent and highway speeding by 42 percent.

Preventive maintenance can reduce breakdowns by 75 percent.

Increasing digitization of the fleet through the application of sensors and integration of data from across the supply chain could enable carriers to create a virtual model of the network. This model can be used to compute and compare multiple scenarios in real time, enhancing decision making-much like Monique's photo equipment retailer did to determine shipping options for her lens.

New urban supply concepts

The trouble with pickup timing is that it's a two-person dance. If each of the participants-the deliverer and the recipient-could operate on her own timetable, the resulting flexibility could drive efficiency elsewhere in the system. For this reason, retailers and logistics companies have pushed for models and technologies in the last mile to shorten time and distance to delivery.

One step is to slow or even reverse the proliferation of delivery destinations. That's the reasoning behind the smart locker-an accessible but secure location that provides retailers, logistics companies, businesses, and individuals with spaces to temporarily store goods for customers to pick up at a later time. With smart lockers, retailers can combine multiple drop-offs into a single delivery. The access codes recipients use to get their packages can also improve tracking. And some lockers are more than smart-they're mobile, able to meet delivery workers at different points throughout the city, minimize the time between deliveries, and allow workers to complete more jobs in less time with less stress. That means increased efficiency for the overall network, but mobile lockers can also add complexity to a system that already has many moving pieces.

Asset sharing

Just as carsharing and ridesharing have challenged traditional models of personal movement-including, for some, the very idea of owning a car-so too could greater sharing of commercial vehicles prompt a rethinking of how carriers operate.

Sharing assets also can allow transportation companies to accomplish more and take better advantage of their own networks' capacities. For example, by leveraging an adjacent network, a regional carrier could use others' assets to deliver outside its typical area, increasing the utilization of its own assets by extending its reach. Regional parcel carriers already collaborate, but technology could help reduce coordination costs and broaden their range.

However, creating an integrated platform that links multiple carriers together remains a challenge. It might make an already-complex network management challenge even more intricate, even as existing systems are under stress from growing demands for speed and real-time transparency. Add in the complexity of insurance coverage limits, liability, and regulatory requirements for certain types of shipments (for example, temperature-controlled or hazardous chemicals) and the solution quickly becomes more complicated than a typical ridesharing application.

Despite the technological and regulatory challenges of integrating shared platforms into complex distribution networks, shippers would also need to contend with other trade-offs. Many use the delivery point as an opportunity to attain customer insights and even cross-sell and up-sell, so they would need to consider alternative ways to maintain customer proximity. Additionally, some shippers may be uncomfortable with their products sharing a truck with those of a competitor.

New need, new tech: Start-ups begin to fill the void
A number of start-up companies have emerged to create platforms that connect carriers with customers and independent contractors.
First mile
Freightos -an integrated quote management system of carriers and forwarders provides greater transparency in just minutes on prices for cross-border freight shipments.
Middle mile
Convoy -a platform that connects local truck drivers to area shippers to fulfill less-than-full-truckload and full-truckload requests, introducing greater competition and optionality, as well as minimizing backhaul. Where many truckers once delivered a shipment and drove back empty, they are now able to track demand and pick up new jobs on the return trip.
Last mile
Dropoff -a courier system that uses independent contractors and their own vehicles to offer same-day delivery within a city: insured, bonded, and certified to emphasize quality.

Alternative vehicles

There is another parallel between personal transportation and freight hauling: With promises of greater fuel efficiency and improved safety, the progressive adoption of electric cars has found its way to the trucking industry.

Nonetheless, drones must surmount legal and financial hurdles as well as technological ones. To become a serious component of the delivery business, they must overcome both government regulation and high operational costs. For now, the technology really makes sense for carriers only when delivery time is critical, customers are willing to pay, and few other options exist.

Those are only the most prominent innovations. In the high-volume, high-demand jungle of the last mile, almost anything may be worth trying. For example, some carriers in China are capping their equipment-heavy package journeys with last-mile travel by a more traditional means: bicycle teams.

To give these new delivery methods a head start, some companies have turned to pre-planning technology, order management software, and dynamic routing tools that can combine with alternative options to help carriers improve delivery efficiency.

In the high-volume, high-demand jungle of the last mile, almost anything may be worth trying. Some carriers in China are capping their equipment-heavy package journeys with last-mile travel by a more traditional means: bicycle teams.

The new route

How can carriers not only adjust to these changing circumstances but profit from them? There are two elements of the delivery journey they need to understand and re-master: ownership and visibility. The ways in which these two dimensions develop and converge to influence the state of the first, middle, and last miles could have a deep influence on the fate of the transportation ecosystem.

Ownership of the delivery journey represents the concentration of asset ownership-in other words, the number of asset owners employed to complete the delivery journey. Today, ownership is relatively concentrated, but in the future, platforms will likely create opportunities for more diffuse ownership by increasing access to excess network capacity and diverse assets with low switching costs. Ultimately, this would enable asset-light models for some players while creating an environment in which niche transportation providers can proliferate.

Visibility into the delivery journey is a measure of the types of data available, the frequency that it is available, and the way that it can be used to make decisions. The rise of IoT technology and blockchain promises to create a high-volume and high-velocity data environment, and sophisticated analytics will likely create opportunities for insight such as dynamic routing and anticipatory shipping.

Combined, these two dimensions of the freight journey-ownership and visibility-suggest four potential "future states" of the movement of goods (see figure 3).

Future states for the last mile

This framework can apply to the first, middle, and last mile of the extended transportation industry. However, given the level of complexity and innovation currently taking place in the last mile, this section will focus there.

State 1: Incremental change

Customer expectations around shipping continue to rise, but inefficiencies within the ecosystem make meeting those expectations challenging; therefore, e-commerce and home delivery represent a significant but not preponderant share of total shipments.

Ecosystem players use third-party assets to augment their fleets, but transactional frictions remain. Players sign contracts far in advance to ensure access to third-party assets or rely on human brokers to manually find extra capacity in the marketplace. Platforms continue to emerge, but the challenge of integrating them into the business persists. Ultimately, these frictions result in excess capacity remaining in the transportation network and limit the integration of niche offerings into the supply chain.

Varied deployment of telematics and connected vehicle technologies inform owners and operators about the status of their own fleets, but the availability of data about the ecosystem as a whole is limited. Many processes remain paper-based, especially those involving an exchange between two players. Analytics are largely descriptive and rely on humans for interpretation and decision making. With limited data and analytical capability, inefficiencies in the transportation network abound.

State 2: A world of digital insight

Increasingly prevalent deployment of telematics and IoT technology generates a significant volume of data about the fleet. Processes are no longer paper-based but reside in the cloud, expanding the digital data set. The most forward-thinking carriers and retailers continue to build their digital capabilities as the volume of data and the computer power to process it both increase. These companies gain real-time insight into their own supply chains, which improves accuracy and permits more efficient use of capacity. Predictive analytics help them better stock inventory by type and location, which means the right products are ready at the right place and time. Analytics change the cost equation, allowing businesses to create price differentials that they can pass to customers as savings. However, the last mile remains strained because excess capacity is not shared, so local optimization, as opposed to ecosystem-wide optimization, remains the norm.

State 3: Rise of sharing

Sharing platforms become increasingly relevant and an integral part of the ecosystem, even more important than human brokers and typical contractual arrangements. These platforms reduce switching costs and drive a proliferation of third-party shipping options, making the last mile of delivery extremely fragmented. This complexity is offset by increased vehicle utilization, which reduces the cost per delivery. Platforms make integrating additional shipping options such as bikes, drones, and smart lockers easier for businesses, helping to meet ever-rising customer expectations. A few platforms emerge as the dominant players in the market and effectively coordinate the fragmented last mile. Larger, integrated players compete against the dominant platforms on price and service level. With data as the new currency, there is limited sharing between the dominant platforms and the larger, integrated players, leaving inefficiency in the ecosystem.

State 4: A new age of integration

The creation of digital markets for the movement of goods enables packages to be delivered at the right place at the right time by the right method, resulting in lower costs and greater convenience across the ecosystem. These markets are made more efficient by integrating and distributing data flows from multiple sources-from vehicles and distribution centers to individual packages, giving customers and shippers constant real-time access to the location and status of their goods and assets. Smart, mobile lockers dynamically move throughout a city, all linked by a digital platform that any in-network carrier can securely access. Carriers and retailers routinely and easily source third-party providers for the last mile, reducing both the cost and speed of delivery. If it isn't nailed down, it's a potential means of delivery. Bikers, walkers, drivers, drones, cabs-they're all available to get a package from point A to point B safely, reliably, and on time.

The carriers and retailers that can place themselves at the center of this digital ecosystem are the ones likely to thrive. While we expect consolidation among the players at the center of the ecosystem, a host of niche providers and informal, part-time couriers will likely proliferate, seizing last-mile market share.

If it isn't nailed down, it's a potential means of delivery. Bikers, walkers, drivers, drones, cabs-they're all available to get a package from point A to point B safely, reliably, and on time.

Pathways to a new age of integration for the last mile

We expect the overarching trends discussed at the beginning of this article to continue into the future, pushing the last mile from the current state into a new age of integration. The relative power of these trends could influence how the future state evolves from today into the future, but it seems clear that the landscape is shifting (see figure 4).

No one at the wheel? Autonomous vehicles and the movement of goods
Autonomous technology may someday make it practical for trucks to move packages with minimal human involvement, reducing operating costs and increasing safety on the roads.

Already, some companies are making significant progress in creating a truck that can go from coast to coast with no driver and no stops. Traditionally, labor represents about three-quarters of the $4,500 it costs to get a full tractor-trailer load from Los Angeles to New York. Autonomous vehicles could not only remove that cost, but also eliminate the stops required by driver time-out laws. A human needs eight hours downtime and can't drive more than 11 hours a day. By moving 24 hours a day, autonomous trucks could increase the capacity of the US transportation network by 100 percent for 25 percent of the cost.

But making these systems widespread is easier said than done. The training, costs, and capabilities it could take to implement autonomy would squeeze smaller operators who lack the scale to "go digital" and may be unable to attract or retain the talent that a more sophisticated operation requires. Low margins across the industry, limited capital reserves, talent challenges, and the realities of daily financial needs may put smaller players at risk of becoming commodity transportation methods.

And as advanced as the technology appears to be, companies may find it's the easy part. Having the capital to implement autonomy at scale may be the larger obstacle to widespread adoption. No matter how high-tech one truck's system may be, autonomy won't work unless OEMs, infrastructure planners, and other third parties make corresponding advances.

And for years to come, liability and security rules, as well as labor unions, may require that even a fully autonomous vehicle still have a driver on board, in which case the promised labor savings won't fully materialize. However, autonomous technology could enable regulation changes allowing drivers to work additional hours. Even one additional hour of work could increase productivity by nearly 10 percent, helping to put a dent in the forecasted driver shortage.

Because of these and other limitations, autonomy may make its earliest advances in the first and middle miles, where driving is less complex. For example, driverless trucks could move goods over highway routes to distribution centers. While technology would drive this potential, the limiting factors may be more traditional: the perception of safety, for one, and the availability of the necessary capital.

A different possible future would see the last mile as the frontier for autonomous vehicles. Technologies and practices first developed for the taxi industry may help freight carriers negotiate the complexity of in-town delivery. Or autonomous delivery robots could assist drivers with heavy loads or postal carriers with arms full of mail.

Ultimately, if autonomous shipping becomes sufficiently ubiquitous, the capacity it represents could become a system of "mobile inventory," in which vehicles on the move amount to rolling warehouses that make up a truly dynamic supply chain.

What it means, and where to start

The farther you look down the road of speculation, the easier it is to indulge the imagination, and the fuzzier the details become. But there are compelling reasons to believe that the movement of goods, particularly over the last mile, will evolve through the future states we have described.

We already see companies actively looking for asset-light transportation models. And at the same time, the growth of digitization and analytics shows no sign of slowing, as companies continue to invest in the hardware, software, and capabilities required to build more transparency into their networks.

Given the potential pace of change in the last mile, retailers should consider:

Making stores multipurpose. With the rise in e-commerce, the store's role could evolve to become a showroom to sample products before buying. Additionally, it could serve as a departure point for same-day shipments to customers, even enabling alternate forms of delivery such as bicycle or drone. Ultimately, companies may need to rethink how their store strategy supports a more compressed supply chain while offering a differentiated customer experience. This is especially important given pressures to monetize square footage, but companies will likely need to build the capabilities to manage the complexities that come with a next-generation retail space and a more complex delivery network.

Making delivery a differentiator for your customers. Delivery is no longer adjacent to the value proposition. More and more, sellers are using differentiated delivery to win customers through speed, tracking, white-glove service, and even high-end packaging. This can be especially important if transportation services are a critical part of your value proposition-for example, through omnichannel retail models.

For carriers, these changes in the ecosystem suggest they should consider:

Refreshing partnership strategies. Some customers may hesitate to make investments in new capabilities given the fast pace of change, so partnering with your most forward-thinking customers to build mutual capabilities could well serve both parties. For example, a carrier could work with a retailer to test drone delivery for select customers who value the fastest possible delivery and who fancy themselves early adopters of new technology.

Building the fleet of the future. Many carriers are already investing in telematics to build a connected fleet, and those investments will likely continue; collecting the data is the first step toward insight. Those that are more forward-looking may also look to experiment with semi-autonomous or electric vehicles, or with sharing platforms, to stay on the leading edge. Exploring small-scale pilots in targeted areas-for example, where weather and traffic are predictable or charging infrastructure abundant-can be helpful.

Using data as a differentiator. As telematics become commonplace and IoT applications proliferate, the volume of available data will likely grow exponentially. To maximize value, companies need to draw actionable insights from this data, in real time. Increasingly, collating the data, analyzing it, and making a decision a day or week later is becoming table stakes. Creating algorithms to make real-time decisions (for example, re-routing) could be the major differentiator. For carriers, that likely means building capabilities to rapidly analyze and act on the information being collected and-just as daunting-creating a culture of data-based decision making. But the potential rewards could be substantial: Carrier executives can use the insights to make the fleet more efficient or to grow the business by identifying customer needs.

Less room for error, but plenty of room for improvement

Today, customers such as Monique often expect a level of service that their parents would have considered the stuff of science fiction. They are more likely to have living arrangements and daily routines that make traditional porch-drop delivery untenable. And they see delivery as an integral part of the seller's responsibility. If you're the carrier, that means the companies that ship with you are putting more than packages on your trucks. More than ever, you are delivering their reputations.

To meet this new world of demand, ecosystem players should understand the ways different new technologies and practices are evolving. And just as importantly, they should master the timing. Knowing the stages of change that lie ahead for the market as a whole, and especially for the last mile, may be the key to knowing which investments to make at which time. Without an informed view, it's too easy to overextend or fall behind.

Will your customers receive same-day, driverless delivery of every good they buy starting next week? Probably not. But these trends point ahead in very clear lines. To flourish, companies should trust in one of their oldest skills: seeing the road ahead.

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It's easy to envision self-driving trucks safely and efficiently carrying shipments down US highways. But that's only part of any product's journey between manufacturer and customer. How will the new mobility ecosystem handle the whole trip, including the trickiest part of all: last-mile delivery?

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VR shopping is the convenience of online shopping and the experience of being in a store (Lou 2017).

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IKEA Virtual Store | IKEA Australia - IKEA

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Explore the living room, living room storage, bedroom, wardrobes and storage departments of an IKEA virtual store wherever and whenever you want. There are iconic IKEA products and planning features highlighted along the way. You can add IKEA products to the shopping list and for customers in ACT, TAS, QLD and NT, you can order products online.

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Ett exempel hur en självkörande bil har testats i trafiken för att skapa en säkrare miljö som inte påverkas av förare som är påverkade av alkohol eller trötthet.

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From our beginnings as the Google self-driving car project, we've been working to make our roads safer, free up people's time, and improve mobility for everyone. Now, as an independent company, Waymo is more committed than ever to the same goal.

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Begrepp och egna kopplingar till referenser

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"A real version of the ideal"

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Virtual reality shopping is on the way - and now new data shows how consumers want to use it.

Seventy to eighty percent of early tech adopter consumers are eager to use virtual reality technology to design rooms by visualizing furniture and accessories assembled together in virtual "rooms," "trying on" and customizing products like jeans and eyeglass frames, and taking virtual shopping "trips" with friends from across the country or around the world .

Those are among the key findings of a survey of 1,000 early-adopter consumers by global management consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting . The results show that "v-commerce" - a blend of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar shopping - is nearly here . Savvy retailers will respond by investing in virtual reality technologies and starting to plan v-commerce strategies . Some - like Lowe's, Alibaba, Wayfair, The Gap , and Sephora - are already making strides.

"V-commerce brings the potential for entirely new shopping experiences and new kinds of added value . But there are risks for retailers - the initial investment is significant, and there are high costs for getting it wrong . Retailers need to do what they've always done - look to their consumers to point the way."

Two kinds of virtual reality shopping are on the way

Retailers are ramping up investment in two kinds of v-commerce technology - "virtual reality" (VR), where consumers use headsets to enter a completely digital world, and more-accessible "augmented reality" (AR), where they use their camera-equipped smartphones to get information (such as prices and color selections) overlaid on a picture of the physical showroom or shopping space .

"For retailers, the appeal is obvious," says L.E.K. Managing Director Rob Haslehurst . "These technologies are a new way for retailers to do what customers want them to - create compelling shopping experiences and have rich communications with them ."

Survey shows how early-adopter customers want to use v-commerce

The L.E.K. survey of 1,000 consumers who had already experienced VR and AR technology was conducted in in the spring of 2017 . Among the findings that help point the way for retailers:

Eighty percent want to use AR or VR to design a room or physical space by browsing virtual or physical showrooms, getting information about furniture and décor, and "seeing" what it looks like . Retailer Wayfair uses VR showrooms where customers can see a room come together as they fill their basket with products . Lowe's Holoroom lets customers design a virtual room and then tour the space. Alibaba's "Buy+" VR app allows consumers to browse and buy from the aisles of a virtual store, no matter where they are in physical space .

Seventy percent want to use v-commerce to try on clothes and accessories and to customize them . Consumers can start with an image of themselves on their smartphones, then search for the perfect shade of makeup or an eyeglass frame that perfectly suits them . The Gap and Sephora are already offering these AR applications.

Seventy percent are strongly interested in virtual shopping, where consumers physically use VR headsets to shop in a virtual store with a friend who isn't present, or with an AI "virtual shopper" similar to Alexa or Siri .

Unifying physical and digital channels can boost sales

V-commerce offers retailers considerable benefits. L.E.K. Managing Director Maria Steingoltz says "It can create new, special experiences that would otherwise not be possible, and that leads to greater consumer engagement . It enables retailers to unify physical and digital channels - brick-and-mortar retailers can bring digital capabilities into the store experience, and online-only retailers can create virtual 'stores .' And the rich experience can generate more sales - a customer can 'see' a sofa in his or her own living room, and then be shown the cushions, lamps and side tables that go with it ."

Retailers that want to take advantage of the v-commerce opportunity should:

Act immediately to make AR and VR a part of their digital strategy. "They're not far out on the horizon - the time to think about them is now," says Haslehurst.

Establish a compelling value proposition and define the business model. "Make sure customers understand from the first encounter how the technology solves their pain," says Steingoltz . "And make sure to define the resources, concrete goals, and metrics for the project."

Consider making alliances with technology leaders. "Retailers don't need to be technology experts," says Haslehurst. "Look for alliances that provide access to world-class technology and give technology makers a good story to tell .

"The future of v-commerce is still developing - but it's time for retailers to start investing in it and creating consumer experiences that fill baskets and the revenue pipeline," Steingoltz says .

Conclusion

Check back on this page frequently for updates and additions.

We've seen a tremendous amount of disruptive change coming from the Virtual Reality Industry. It is surely certain that this kind of content will accelerate based on trends in the future.

You most likely have some other VR ideas that can change the world! Share them with us on social media!

4 Ways VR is Revolutionizing the Workplace

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What the People want from Virtual Reality Shopping | VU Dream

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Virtual reality shopping is on the way - and now new data shows how consumers want to use it. Seventy to eighty percent of early tech adopter consumers are eager to use virtual reality technology to design rooms by visualizing furniture and accessories assembled together in virtual "rooms," "trying on" and customizing products like jeans and eyeglass frames, and taking virtual shopping "trips" with friends from across the country or around the world .

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IKEA Virtual Store | IKEA Australia - IKEA

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Explore the living room, living room storage, bedroom, wardrobes and storage departments of an IKEA virtual store wherever and whenever you want. There are iconic IKEA products and planning features highlighted along the way. You can add IKEA products to the shopping list and for customers in ACT, TAS, QLD and NT, you can order products online.

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Efter att ha sammanställt all info i min mind-map kunde jag observera den för att se kopplingar och samband. Jag valde att fokusera mycket på de fördelar jag hade noterat med olika transportmedel och ville på något sätt kombinera dessa. En mening stod ut för mig som jag hade noterat genom min observation, ”butiken kommer till kunden istället för tvärtom”. Jag insåg att jag tidigare hade designat för en miljö som ser ut som den gör idag, dvs. att det finns fysiska butiker som kunderna tar sig till på sätt som liknar dagens transport men i förbättrad form. Här vill jag nu vända upp och ner på den kedjan så att butiken kan komma till ens eget hem, men inte genom vanligt e-handel utan med hjälp av VR (med en social tvist) som gör det möjligt att handla tillsammans i VR-världen.

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Anteckningar från observation från shoppingcenters och mataffärer.

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En lösning som gör det enklare och flexiblare för människor att shoppa som samtidigt är bättre för miljön.

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- Oväntad lösning
- Förändrad syn på verkligheten
- Söka det oprövade

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First Insight - Identifiera ett problem, Vem är användaren och vad är deras behov, Vad är syftet och fokuset
Saturation - Samla information, forska, observera, läs, inspireras (Observation och secondary research) Brainstorming och mind-mapping.
Incubation -  Se kopplingar och samband, visuella hjälpmedel som får hjärnan att bearbeta idéer omedvetet
Illumination - "Aha-moment", Lösningar och visioner uppstår
Verification - Skapa en konkret lösning (t.ex skisser, prototyper) för att pröva idén samt gallra lösningar baserat på användbarhet
Other Insight - Få feedback från andra intressenter, potentiella användare osv (focus group). Viktigt för en iterativ designprocess.

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Kreativitet består av alla dessa faktorer som krävs för att lyckas med sin kreativitet. Därför har jag valt ut designmetoder som relaterar till dessa komponenter för att främja idéhöjden.

· K (knowledge) – Observation och secondary research

· I (imagination) – Brainstorming och mind-mapping

· E (evaluation) – Feedback från en Focus Group

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Ruth Noller, symbolic equation for creativity

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Ruth Noller, symbolic equation for creativity

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· K (knowledge) – obtained through our life experiences.

· I (imagination) – ones ability to generate ideas or make connections.

· E (evaluation) – examing the advantages and disadvantages of a particular idea or situation.

+ Positive attitude

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Jag har valt att jobba vidare med mitt koncept för "the real", shoppingbussen.

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Brainstorming

Mind mapping

Secondary Research

Personas

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Brainstorming

Mind mapping

Image Board

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Brainstorming

Mind mapping

Secondary Research

Personas

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Portalhållplatser
Idealet är att slippa väntetider och restider genom att det finns portala hållplatser. Detta är hållplatser med portaler som tar en vart man vill på nolltid.

• Dagens busshållsplatser görs om till portaler
• Det finns flera futuristiska displayer vid varje portal där man bestämmer vart man ska åka
• Minskar restider och väntetider då flera kan gå igenom portalen samtidigt
• Avstånd har ingen betydelse längre, du kan jobba långt hemifrån genom att resa genom portaler (därmed öppnas flera gränsöverskridande möjlig-heter när det kommer till t.ex. jobb och resande)

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Autonoma cyklar on-demand ska fungera som ett miljövänligt transportalternativ som ska uppmuntra folk att använda cykel oavsett avstånd eller syfte.

Fungerar på samma sätt som självkörande bilar – Ökad säkerhet med sensorer

• Eventuellt kan boendeföreningar ha egna cykelpooler

• Val att köra i ”manuellt” läge där man trampar själv och kan avvika från sin planerade rutt

• Boka den via app, spara din rutt och få en bekräftelsekod, hämta upp på en cykelhub nära dig med din kod, som en ”postlocker”

• Miljövänligt, bra i städer, får plats många på speciella ”cykelvägar”, bre-dare filer (för att cyklar är minst lika populära som bilar i framtiden)

• Autonoma cyklar gör det lättare att ta sig an längre avstånd

• Lämna cykeln i vilken ledig cykelhub du vill ”One way rides” blir möjliga

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Detta är en självkörande shoppingbuss som ska göra det enklare för personer utan bil att åka och storhandla. Rutten kan gå till olika affärer, marknader eller shoppingcenter beroende på vad folk önskar i appen. Bussen ska vara speciellt anpassad till att folk ska kunna få plats med shoppingkassar.

Personer kan boka via app, ju fler som bokar en buss en viss tid, desto billigare blir platsen. Detta ska uppmuntra samåkning. Är ingen plats bokad så går inte bussen (inga onödiga rutter)

• Plats för bagage och shoppingkassar (till skillnad från dagens bussar)

• Varje område kan ha en buss som går till de mark-nader, shoppingcenter eller affärer som folk bokar (kör kortare sträckor).

• Självkörande fordon – Ökad säkerhet i trafiken

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Den här artikeln visar hur man genom detaljerad data om en persons beteendemönster samt ett antal faktorer (t.ex. väder och resans syfte) kan personalisera färdplaner och styra personer mot mer hållbara transportalternativ genom en app.

Semanjski, I. & Gautama, S. 2015, "Smart City Mobility Application--Gradient Boosting Trees for Mobility Prediction and Analysis Based on Crowdsourced Data", Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), vol. 15, no. 7, pp. 15974-15987.

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Smart City Mobility Application—Gradient Boosting Trees for Mobility Prediction and Analysis Based on Crowdsourced Data

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Users’ resistance towards radical innovations: The case of the self-driving car

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Users’ resistance towards radical innovations: The case of the self-driving car

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Den här artikeln studerar människors attityder och åsikter kring self-driving cars. Den visar att det finns psykologiska barriärer till att lämna över kontrollen till teknologi.

König, M. & Neumayr, L. 2017, "Users’ resistance towards radical innovations: The case of the self-driving car", Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, vol. 44, pp. 42-52.

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Users resistance towards radical innovations The case of the self-driving car

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Självkörande bilar, t.ex. Googles Waymo, är ett koncept som skapats för att göra transporter säkrare och enklare.

Det designas dock även för andra användningsområden inom självkörande transporter, som t.ex. IDEOs "WOW pod" som skapar en flexibel, flyttbar arbetsplats.

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From our beginnings as the Google self-driving car project, we've been working to make our roads safer, free up people's time, and improve mobility for everyone. Now, as an independent company, Waymo is more committed than ever to the same goal.

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Users resistance towards radical innovations The case of the self-driving car

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"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that over 90% of car crashes involve human error" (Wang 2015, p. 1).

Statistik visar att vi lever i en värld där säkerheten i trafiken är hotad av främst den mänskliga faktorn (t.ex. genom påverkan av alkohol, trötthet eller mobilanvändning). Därmed skapas ett problemområde som design och innovation möjligen kan lösa.

Samtidigt så visar studier att en del människor är tveksamma till self-driving cars från ett säkerhetsperspektiv eftersom man lämnar över kontrollen till ett "system" som möjligen kan bli hackat (König and Neumayr 2017, p. 51).

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Begrepp och egna kopplingar till referenser

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Hur mobilitet tänjer gränserna till de områden man kan utforska genom att erbjuda jorden från ett nytt perspektiv.

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Why we go

I really hope that there will be millions of kids all over the world who will be captivated and inspired about the possibility of them going to space one day."

- Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Galactic

Become an Astronaut

This year, we'll be making a limited number of tickets available for future spaceflights. Take the leap with us as we get one step closer to filling the world with astronauts.

The Experience

Spaceport America

Spread across 27 square miles, Spaceport America is our center of flight operations, and the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

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I really hope that there will be millions of kids all over the world who will be captivated and inspired about the possibility of them going to space one day." - Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Galactic This year, we'll be making a limited number of tickets available for future spaceflights.

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IDEOs design visar hur en arbetsplats kan ta sig till oss, för att öka flexibiliteten och effektiviteten.

"WOW [Work on Wheels] pods might occupy a location between two offices, splitting travel times for both teams," said the designers. "Or it could be parked by a site-specific project, like a building under construction."

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Global design consultancy IDEO has developed a series of concept vehicles that imagine how autonomous vehicles could transform the way we work, shop and travel (+ movie).

As part of its Future of Automobility project, IDEO produced three concepts exploring the potential of driverless vehicles, including on-demand delivery services and workplaces that commute to employees.

Driverless cars designed for use as mobile offices

"We do quite a bit of more focused, next-generation work with our transportation clients that takes into account many of the constraints needed to provide mobility solutions in today's transportation context," IDEO partner and executive design director Danny Stillion told Dezeen. "These automobility concepts are a bit different."

"While not intended as literal vehicle concepts ready to ship, the range of concepts is intended to help us think about what life would be like with them in our lives, and to provoke further thinking about the kind of broader solutions we will have to work together on to solve our future mobility needs," he explained.

The first of the three concepts is a driverless car equipped with GPS, object sensing, lane-keeping and object avoidance systems, as well as route-sensing technology.

These technologies could enable the vehicle to travel at higher speeds while communicating with other cars, constantly making on-the-road adjustments for the benefit of its occupants and the network as a whole.

Removing the preconditions for human error could also allow vehicles to travel closer together, improving the aerodynamics of the fleet resulting in fuel savings.

IDEO's 21st Century Mules concept imagines a scenario where "everything from your new jeans to a hot lunch" are delivered almost instantly.

Equipped with the same technologies as the driverless cars, a delivery truck called Cody would use algorithms and GPS to plan the best routes for neighbourhood deliveries, as well as adjusting and responding to requests on the go.

"After receiving a notification that Cody has arrived, you'll simply walk to the curb, do a biometric scan, and receive your package," explained the designers. "No tips required."

Coexisting with traditional and on-demand delivery services, Cody could be used by individuals who want to post letters and packages.

Cody would also be used by depots and could organise products for other delivery trucks, as well as mark packages with handling instructions to guide robotic arms. IDEO said this could increase efficiency and "eliminate human error from the delivery process".

Operating 24 hours a day, Cody vehicles would only pause during off-peak hours to recharge, but future iterations could also incorporate wireless charging.

The final concept rethinks commuting by presenting an inverse scenario where working spaces travel to employees.

"WOW [Work on Wheels] pods might occupy a location between two offices, splitting travel times for both teams," said the designers. "Or it could be parked by a site-specific project, like a building under construction."

The interlocking cube-like offices on wheels could also present options for employers looking to provide "greater access to daylight and natural ventilation, as well as views and green space".

Each pod would be reconfigurable via a booking service to meet a company's specific needs, while autonomous support vehicles could provide on-demand services when and where required.

Car manufacturers are increasingly looking at the possibilities offered by self-driving vehicles, including Tesla who recently launched its Model SD electric car that could soon be "summoned" by owners to pick them up autonomously.

German manufacturing giant Mercedes-Benz recently unveiled a lorry that will be able to drive itself across Europe's roads within the next ten years.

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IDEO envisions a future where self-driving workplaces commute to you

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Global design consultancy IDEO has developed a series of concept vehicles that imagine how autonomous vehicles could transform the way we work, shop and travel (+ movie). As part of its Future of Automobility project, IDEO produced three concepts exploring the potential of driverless vehicles, including on-demand delivery services and workplaces that commute to employees.

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Hur mobilitet kan se ut om 100 år. Här har vardagen och resandet utvecklats med hjälp av en kombination av förnyade energikällor, digitala artefakter (t.ex. VR) och transportmedel där vi kan nå platser som tidigare inte varit möjligt.

"Mini roving homes, powered by renewable energy, allow us to migrate throughout the year and live in the most inhospitable places. We’ll have more leisure time as well as opportunities to work remotely. To travel virtually, we use headgear that simultaneously stimulates the brain to reproduce all the sensory inputs of being there".

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Industrial designers predict the future of transportation in 100 years

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We asked designers to envision travel in 2115

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Exempel på visionen om ett supersnabbt transportmedel som samtidigt är bra för miljön.

"At its core, Hyperloop™ is a tube-based inter and intra-city transportation system for passengers and cargo. Drastic reduction of air in the tube along with magnetic levitation and propulsion allows capsules to move through the tube with nearly zero friction and safely accelerate to airplane speeds. And this is all powered by a combination of alternative energy and energy conservation systems.

We are building Hyperloop to produce as much or more energy than it uses."

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Hyperloop Transportation Technologies | HTT

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Hyperloop Transportation Technologies | HTT

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The original Hyperloop. Founded in 2013, we are over 600 engineers and technologists building the next breakthrough in transportation. Join us!

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Ett exempel hur en självkörande bil har testats i trafiken för att skapa en säkrare miljö som inte påverkas av förare som är påverkade av alkohol eller trötthet.

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From our beginnings as the Google self-driving car project, we've been working to make our roads safer, free up people's time, and improve mobility for everyone. Now, as an independent company, Waymo is more committed than ever to the same goal.

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Finns det några samband mellan unga människors strävan efter mobilitet och olika faktorer?Boende, plats, tillgång till internet och kunskap om omvärlden påverkar unga människors strävan efter mobilitet i deras framtid.

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Seeds of cosmopolitan future Young people and their aspirations for future mobility

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Exempel på områden som det designas för:
- Kollektivtrafiken
- Personbilar
- Självkörande fordon
- Miljövänliga lösningar
- Transport för "urban areas"
- On-demand mobility och "as-needed basis"

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Phill Seagram and Mika Becktor and Elie Ahovi and Ti Chang and Carla Diana and Keith Doležel

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Industrial designers predict the future of transportation in 50 years

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We asked designers to envision travel in 2065

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Den här artikeln diskuterar hurvida självkörande bilar kommer bidra till en säkrare miljö inom trafiken, (där den mänskliga faktorn står för majoriteten av de olyckor som inträffar), samt hurvida dessa självkörande bilar kan ta etiska och säkra beslut i komplicerade situationer.

"Should they be programmed to protect their occupants at all cost, or to make a move that could seriously injure the riders but lead to fewer deaths overall in a collision?"

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Companies like Google and Tesla have held up autonomous vehicles as a panacea for road accidents, which claim over 32,000 American lives each year. This month, Obama put stock in that idea, signing a $305bn transportation bill that includes grants for self driving vehicles. That backs up 10 years of US Department of Transportation work on technical studies and policies surrounding autonomous cars.

But will all this investment and research actually result in a future free of car accidents?

Many researchers say forecasting the impact of self-driving cars on reducing accidents is difficult because there just isn't enough real-life road testing and data to make a reliable forecast.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, however, found that over 90% of car crashes involve human error. In the remaining cases, factors such as weather and failed car components were primary causes. Robots can potentially be programmed to make faster and better decisions while avoiding human pitfalls such as driving while drunk or texting.

A paper from global consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates that a 90% crash reduction rate could have saved the US economy $190bn in 2012 alone.

If you have something react faster than humans, you could still save lots of lives

Richard Wallace, Center for Automotive Research

Demonstrating that autonomous cars are safe and able to reduce accidents will be crucial for convincing the public that ceding driving to computers is a good idea. Skepticism, and even fear of losing control of the activities that play a big role in our lives, already abound about allowing robots to manage our lives. Questions have been raised about whether they could make ethical and safe decisions when confronted with complex situations that involve not only cars, but also pedestrians and other obstacles. Should they be programmed to protect their occupants at all cost, or to make a move that could seriously injure the riders but lead to fewer deaths overall in a collision?

"We certainly think that [autonomous cars are] going to significantly lower the rate of fatalities. We just don't have a full sense of it," said Richard Wallace, director of transportation systems analysis at the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Michigan. "I think what you can say for certain is that as technology progresses, the artificial intelligence that will be doing the driving will become more and more perfected."

The highway to progress

Technological advances, such as seat belts and antilock brakes, have helped to lower the number of overall car crashes from 6.7m in 1988 to 5.7m in 2013, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fatal crashes declined from 42,130 in 1988 to 30,057 in 2013.

Researchers believe that computer-driven cars will lessen the severity of injuries caused in car accidents. "If you have something react faster than humans, even if it can't completely avoid a crash, you could still save lots of lives," Wallace said. A robot car can still get rear-ended by a human-driven car, for example, but its sensors could detect the pending collision and maneuver the car quickly to lengthen the distance before impact.

Car manufacturers such as Audi, Toyota and Tesla have announced plans to launch autonomous cars, or cars that can autopilot in certain conditions, within five years. But predictions for when a large number of consumers will choose them over conventional vehicles vary and depend on assumptions such as affordability and changes in insurance and other regulations, according to Kara M Kockelman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied the issue. IHS Automotive, a market research firm, expects a global sales of nearly 12m self-driving cars, or 10% of the global total, in 2035. But it cautions that the forecast might be low if research and development efforts in creating self-driving cars continue to increase.

Carmakers have been gradually automating functions to help humans navigate and avoid accidents for over 10 years. Many cars now come with sensors and video cameras to display blind spots and beep when sliding into a tight parking spot. Newer technology uses sound or a vibrating steering wheel to alert drivers when the cars are swerving into another lane without the turn signal on.

Embedding more sensors and cameras to capture high-resolution images and measure distance all around a car would enable it to take over the driving task. Wireless communication technology that allows cars to talk to each other could improve traffic flow, increase the number of cars that a highway can accommodate and reduce fuel consumption.

"If we have connected, automated vehicles, it becomes possible to drive them much closer together and to have them follow each other smoothly, in contrast to today's stop and go traffic," said Steve Shladover, a program manager at the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies. "This has the potential to double the effective capacity of a highway lane."

The numbers game

Researchers are increasingly trying to quantify the benefits of specific crash-avoidance technology. A publicly funded 2011 study by General Motors and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute looked at how several technologies, such as visual and audio warning or automatic braking, could prevent crashes in which cars backed into another object. Simulations indicated that those technologies could reduce backing crashes by 32%, or nearly 65,000, annually nationwide. But the paper also cautioned that serious limitations in the amount and types of data available made it difficult to predict the real-world impact of these technologies.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jason Gao is studying ways to reduce congestion if cars can talk to each other wirelessly. Cars that enter a congested zone would request digital tokens from those leaving it. If no tokens are available, then drivers would get a turn-by-turn audio instruction for traveling around the traffic jam. The digital tokens serve as permits to travel through an area. Gao is looking at whether pricing those permits could affect the number of cars that pass through and help to control the traffic flow. In a simulation that compared his car-to-car communication design with one in place in Singapore - where a toll system scans for dashboard-mounted transponders in cars and charges drivers for entering a congested zone - Gao said his system could increase the car speed by an average of 8%.Cars could travel faster because they could coordinate the traffic flow through the congestion zone among themselves in advance.

Down the road

Google has garnered lots of publicity for loosing its driverless cars in Silicon Valley and Austin - last month, police stopped one of its peapod-shaped cars for driving too slowly. Ford is testing a self-driving Fusion hybrid in a new 32-acretest track at the University of Michigan campus, designed to simulate an urban driving environment. Audi has done its own test runs, including a trial on a section of a Florida highway that was set aside for autonomous car research.

Research is also emerging to show how safe autonomous cars might be when they run alongside conventional cars on the road. In an analysis of car accidents involving self-driving cars from 2012 to 2015, published in October by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, autonomous cars attained a higher crash rate per million miles traveled than conventional cars - but robot cars were not at fault in any of the crashes. Injuries from those crashes were also milder than those that involved only conventional vehicles, the report said. The analysis looked at publicly available crash data from 1.2m miles of test drives by Google, Delphi and Audi and found just 11 accidents.

Whether self-driving cars will replace conventional vehicles will depend not only on technical improvements, but also policies that will need to be put in place. Those rules have only started to emerge. Just this week, California proposed regulations for autonomous cars, and it could become the first state to allow consumers to ride in them. The proposal, if adopted, would require humans to take control of the cars when necessary and take responsibility for tickets and accidents. That means at the end, the blame for crashes will still go to humans, not robots.

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Self-driving cars are coming, and the technology promises to save lives

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Companies like Google and Tesla have held up autonomous vehicles as a panacea for road accidents, which claim over 32,000 American lives each year. This month, Obama put stock in that idea, signing a $305bn transportation bill that includes grants for self driving vehicles.

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Den här artikeln beskriver hur trenden "on-demand mobility" växer genom att vi använder oss mer av delat ägarskap (t.ex. genom bilpooler) och att behovet av att äga en egen bil kanske minskar i framtiden.

"The cost of vehicle ownership, increasing commute times, limitations on infrastructure expansion, the need to conserve resources and cut greenhouse emissions and even the change in the relationship between the millennial generation and automobiles are all contributing to the growth in on-demand mobility".

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We recently had the opportunity to participate in two important conferences focused on the future: one on the on-demand economy ( On Demand Economy 2015) and the other on mobile communications ( Rutberg Future Mobile 2015).

While each conference covered a range of fascinating topics, if taken together, one can develop from the conversations and presentations a clear picture of the future of mobility. This future, creating both great opportunities and economic dislocations, is being driven by established tech players as well as a new generation of innovative startups.

We see three key trends shaping mobility, both personal and commercial: the move to on-demand mobility, the impact of driverless vehicles and the growth of electric vehicles.

Together, these trends will bring about a future that is safer, cheaper, offers more choices and is more resource efficient.

In an early sign of the changes to come, last month it was reported that Uber's CEO is planning to buy 500,000 of Tesla's autonomous vehicles as soon as they are available. Why is Uber willing to make this bet, and why are the plans of these companies so important to the future of mobility?

Let's examine each of the trends in turn.

On-Demand Mobility

On-demand mobility is without doubt one of the most important trends in transportation and in the global economy today. And by this we mean mobility (moving people, goods or services) based on a mobile app that allows for ease of scheduling and payment.

The recent and ongoing exponential growth of ride sharing, car sharing and last-mile delivery services is just the beginning of a global shift away from personal vehicle ownership to a shared, on-demand model.

According to the Economist, car sharing alone will reduce car ownership at an estimated rate of one shared vehicle replacing 15 owned vehicles.

The ability of the leaders of the new on-demand mobility market to build trust with key stakeholders - consumers, regulators, insurers, investors - is essential to their success.

The cost of vehicle ownership, increasing commute times, limitations on infrastructure expansion, the need to conserve resources and cut greenhouse emissions and even the change in the relationship between the millennial generation and automobiles are all contributing to the growth in on-demand mobility. So much so that we believe within three-five years most miles driven in urban settings globally will be on shared platforms (ride share, last-mile delivery, car share and public transit).

That may seem shocking to those of us in the West, but consider what is happening in the two most populous nations on earth, India and China. At present, only about 5 percent of Indians own a personal vehicle, and already the roads are jammed almost to the point of impassibility. The same is happening in China.

Yet both nations have a rapidly growing middle class with money to spend. It will be impossible for them to replicate the current U.S. model of car ownership, so on-demand mobility will serve the mobility needs of the hundreds of millions of newly affluent Indians and Chinese, without personal vehicle ownership. This is why growth in on-demand mobility in India and China has already eclipsed that of North America and Europe.

Driverless Vehicles

What immediately comes to mind when talk turns to autonomous vehicles is Google's high-profile efforts to develop a driverless car or, perhaps, rumors that Apple plans to create a competing vehicle. They are not alone. Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and others are all working on autonomous vehicles. The first such cars are expected to be available to consumers in the next few years. Driverless trucks operating on public roads are a few years further out, but are definitely coming.

Yet the imperative for an autonomous vehicle is not being driven by consumer demand, but by a powerful economic force central to the success of the on-demand mobility market. This is why Uber is investing heavily in developing autonomous vehicles: Eliminating the driver in the on-demand model radically changes the economics to the considerable benefit of the service provider.

Under Uber's current business model, approximately 60-80 percent of revenues stay with the car owner. Driverless vehicles would put most of that revenue into the coffers of the on-demand services providers.

Based on the fact that on-demand mobility companies are highly motivated from a profit perspective to develop driverless cars and trucks, we can expect that over the next 5-15 years, autonomous vehicles will profoundly alter the mobility landscape.

The imperative for an autonomous vehicle is not being driven by consumer demand, but by a powerful economic force central to the success of the on-demand mobility market.

In addition to the very real and very significant impact on transportation economics along national transportation routes, we should expect the safety of driverless vehicles to become a paramount area of focus and regulatory scrutiny. After all, roads are filled with many tons of steel hurtling around at 75 miles per hour, which can get really dangerous really fast if proper measures aren't taken.

If you speak to most actuaries - the math and stats experts responsible for quantifying and measuring risk at insurance companies - they'll tell you that currently, risk is for the most part measured via DMV driving records and demographic signals. Different segments of the population tend to cluster into similar risk buckets.

Clearly, this approach does not work for autonomous vehicles. We need a new risk-monitoring standard, a driving-analytics benchmark that is largely behavioral. The emphasis here is on "behavioral" as it is meaningless to use demographic criteria for safe driving evaluations in case of autonomous vehicles.

Electric Vehicles

Stalled for years, with global auto companies given them little more than lip service, advances in battery, control and electric motor technologies - coupled with consumer concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and gas price volatility - are finally driving electric vehicles into the mainstream auto market. Recent entrants to the market, such as Tesla, have shown Detroit's Big Three that electric vehicles can be sexy, fast, safe and convenient - not to mention environmentally friendly and resource efficient.

Here again, it is the on-demand mobility market that will be a significant catalyst of the shift to electric vehicles. The continued explosive growth in the demand for on-demand services and the expansion of autonomous vehicles creates the need for a transportation platform that is reliable and cost-effective to operate and maintain. Electric motors are far more dependable than internal combustion engines; they require significantly less maintenance, have much longer life expectancies and are far cheaper to operate.

When you think about a vehicle that is manufactured with on-demand usage in mind, it will not be sitting in a garage 96 percent of the time like privately owned, human-driven vehicles. Rather it will be designed to remain in operation 24/7/365, and the most economical solution for this usage profile is electric (assuming battery swapping during off-peak hours).

As the on-demand mobility market dramatically increases demand for electric vehicles, that demand will put downward pressure on the price of such vehicles (and the battery and electric motor technologies that scale them) while driving improvements in performance. This sets up a virtuous cycle that will rapidly expand the number of electric vehicles on our roads.

On-demand mobility is without doubt one of the most important trends in transportation and in the global economy today.

While initially we'll see an increase in hybrid vehicle adoption for the on-demand segment, the second generation of vehicles will be quite different. These vehicles aren't today's electric vehicles. The new generation of vehicles designed for on-demand services will not only be optimized for continuous operation and cheap maintenance, but also for the efficiency and convenience of the payload (whether passenger or goods).

We imagine electric vehicles designed with passengers in mind (private modular passenger pods, Wi-Fi, "first class" seating, etc.) that not only drive themselves but also stop for rapid charging/switching of batteries and communicate with one another via mesh technology to optimize routes and per-mile utilization.

Conclusions

We stand on the threshold of what can realistically be described as the largest and most important shift in transportation in a century. The benefits will be enormous: An 80+ percent reduction in the cost of transportation. Reduced pollution. Reduced stress and road rage. A dramatic decrease in accidents and traffic deaths. Gaining back time lost to commuting - and the associated increase in productivity. Freeing up two lanes on many urban roads by eliminating parked cars. Even the reclaiming of the space allocated to home garages.

This future is being driven by the nexus of three significant trends. Each is important in and of itself, but combined they create an unstoppable force for change.

As with most significant changes to the way we live our lives, safety and trust and data are key to enabling the potential of on-demand mobility. Consider the adoption of electricity in the late 1900s or of the automobile in the 1920s or the airplane in the late 1940s - all were contingent upon building public and regulatory trust in these technologies.

Today, ride-sharing services such as Uber, Lyft and many others are under intense scrutiny in communities across America and around the world. The ability of the leaders of the new on-demand mobility market to build trust with key stakeholders - consumers, regulators, insurers, investors - is essential to their success. Deploying technologies that independently monitor and improve road safety are an essential part of creating the trust needed to accelerate the future of mobility.

Featured Image: SP-Photo/Shutterstock

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We recently had the opportunity to participate in two important conferences focused on the future: one on the on-demand economy ( On Demand Economy 2015) and the other on mobile communications ( Rutberg Future Mobile 2015). While each conference covered a range of fascinating topics, if taken together, one can develop from the conversations and presentations a clear picture of the future of mobility.

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Den här artikeln handlar om hur digitaliseringen kan effektivisera frakt, transport och logistik för att skapa en förbättrad kundresa från beställning till leverans. T.ex. genom ökad transparens samt bättre metoder för att automatisera färdplaner.

"As the items are being loaded into the van, custody is tracked through the cloud so the retailer—and customer—have visibility into the location of the parcel in real time. As the van rolls away from the store, the most efficient route is dynamically calculated based on drop-offs and forecasted traffic conditions."

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Introduction: The last mile
Monique needs a new lens for a photo shoot tomorrow morning. Scrambling, she looks for one online and finds a good choice from a reputable retailer. But she doesn't work regular hours, and her apartment is in a high-rise with no doorman. A "Sorry We Missed You!" slip is not an option. As Monique browses, the retailer's software is automatically looking across its inventory in distribution centers, fulfillment centers, stores, and trucks while dynamically incorporating transit costs from parcel carriers, rate bureaus, and its private fleet. Through real-time scenario analysis, the retailer identifies that a lens is in a truck on its way to a store near Monique's default shipping address, and it could be efficiently diverted. At the online checkout, Monique is presented with two shipping options: standard two-day shipping through a parcel carrier's network or same-day shipping to a self-serve smart locker. Since her photo shoot is in the morning, Monique selects the expedited smart-locker option. As soon as Monique clicks "Buy," instructions are cascaded throughout the network to seamlessly enable the delivery. As the truck containing Monique's lens is being unloaded at the store, the receiving agent is notified to set aside the item for high-priority delivery. The agent packages the lens and adds a smart label to the box so that it can be tracked through the cloud. In parallel, the retailer's algorithm dynamically matches its high-priority delivery needs with available capacity in the market through an online platform. An independent transportation company accepted Monique's delivery through the platform-it has vans in the area making other deliveries. Later that day, a small, electric van arrives to pick up Monique's lens and other high-priority deliveries from the store. As the items are being loaded into the van, custody is tracked through the cloud so the retailer-and Monique-have visibility into the location of the lens in real time. As the van rolls away from the store, the most efficient route is dynamically calculated based on drop-offs and forecasted traffic conditions. When the van arrives at the assigned smart locker-owned by yet another company-the driver places Monique's lens in a particular compartment using a unique code. After the locker receives Monique's package, and a number of others, it moves to a location near Monique's default shipping address, since there are a number of customers picking up packages in that area. Monique is notified on her smartphone that her lens is ready for pickup. On her way home that evening, she swings by the locker. The order code that gives her access to her compartment is on her phone; a few hours later, a different code on a different phone will open the same compartment for someone else's transaction.
Shipping and the future of mobility

To get Monique's specialty lens from a moving truck to her hands in under 24 hours, the lens didn't ride on a large delivery truck through a static transportation network. It was delivered through a dynamic network that flexes based on capacity and demand. And most of the innovation in this scenario happened within a short radius of Monique's home. The factory, distribution center, and freight that got her package across thousands of miles have all seen their share of new thinking. But for carriers battling the bottom-line effects of fuel and labor prices, it's that fragmented time- and labor-intensive last mile that seems to carry a truckload of promise.

This article explores emerging trends within the transportation ecosystem and provides a framework for thinking about how digitization and new asset models could challenge existing business models. Along the way, it offers critical guidance to help both industry incumbents and new entrants determine where to place bets in the future of mobility. For those whose livelihoods depend on moving goods, the landscape is challenging, but it may also be a fertile field for the kind of leading-edge thinking that can turn complexity into opportunity.

An ecosystem in transit(ion)

Today's transportation ecosystem is covering more miles with fewer vehicles and reaping the benefits of persistently low fuel prices. But pressures are appearing on the horizon.

Additionally, analysts expect online sales to continue to grow as a share of overall retail sales, driving growth in the number of goods that would need to navigate the complexities of the last mile. This could put pressure on the last-mile providers to move an increasing volume of goods through the network. Additionally, an increase in online sales would generate an uptick in returns, meaning that the last-mile networks of tomorrow will need to be optimized for both delivery and pick-up, while handling a greater volume of goods.

When looking at an individual delivery, fuel and wages make up most of the cost, and because those are highly influenced by prevailing market forces, carriers typically have minimal control over those costs (see figure 1). The recent dip in crude oil prices has reduced the cost of a key input for the industry. Indeed, carriers have usually been able to turn volatility into profit: When fuel prices drop, margins expand, and when fuel prices rise, those increases usually get passed on to customers as a surcharge. But that pass-through isn't absolute, and low oil prices likely won't last forever. Indeed, low oil prices can even reduce transportation volumes for carriers within or adjacent to the energy industry, so they are not necessarily a boon to all.

Breaking down the delivery journey
A typical package's journey can be broken down into three phases: the first mile, middle mile, and last mile. While the first mile of an item's trip usually takes it from a production facility to a warehouse, and the middle mile then takes it from that warehouse to a distribution hub (usually including the long haul that accounts for most of the actual distance), the last mile is where large shipments of goods atomize into hundreds or thousands of individual deliveries, each with its own route, location, and timing. Until now, major carriers have used big infrastructure investments and economies of scale to dominate this environment. But we expect the ways in which goods move about to change. New technologies and market dynamics look poised to reshape every stage of a product's journey-especially the last mile.

Traffic report: tech and social trends expected to shape the new reality

Against this backdrop, the transportation ecosystem faces new pressures from multiple directions: Most customers want more options while digitization makes more possible, new delivery concepts are possible in urban areas where destinations and recipients are concentrated, asset sharing may change the calculus of "ownership," and alternative vehicle types may alter the ways in which time and labor influence the bottom line. Ultimately, these trends will likely affect stakeholders across the ecosystem (see figure 2).

Changing customer expectations

Consumers' expectations for shipping are rising: For example, a 2016 Deloitte study found that most consider "fast shipping" to be within two days, while just a year earlier most said it was within three or four days. Even as customers' expectations have increased, though, their willingness to pay for fast shipping has fallen, with 64 percent unwilling to pay anything extra for two-day shipping. And from the consumer's point of view, all miles-first, middle, last-are equal. They just want it NOW.

As the balance of sales has moved from brick-and-mortar to online, the demands on the transportation network have shifted, making shipping more complex. Where a single truck once moved a large load from a distribution center to a single retail location, the same volume of goods may now travel the last mile on many trucks-each of which may be less than full-with less predictable routing to stores, smart lockers, and individual homes.

Or not homes. While many of these trends are most pronounced with consumers, businesses are beginning to ask for similar value creation in B2B transactions. One survey found that in Canada, nearly half of all businesses that receive less-than-full truckload freight service are now asking for specialized or expedited deliveries to meet their operational needs.

Digitization

Barcode scanners have been in use for years. Freight companies are no strangers to the use of IT. And connectivity is at their core-it's no coincidence that telegraph lines originally ran along stagecoach and rail routes, or that truckers relied on CB radios long before smartphones made instantaneous two-way communication blasé. But today, all these forces-sensors, computing power, and the ability to connect-are coming together with unprecedented power.

Having committed to such a large role for data, carriers could find it more and more necessary to maintain the ability to collect and make sense of it. If yesterday's version of digitization measured route efficiency and increased preventative maintenance effectiveness, today's version is beginning to monitor individual operators' driving styles and the way they contribute to things such as tire wear.

The dollars in the details
Even with today's technology, digitization offers quantifiable benefits for trucking:

One company was able to save $1.3 million in annual fuel costs across its 1,000-vehicle fleet by identifying available trucks and adapting the routes of all vehicles.

Testing shows that telematics can reduce crash rates by 20 percent and highway speeding by 42 percent.

Preventive maintenance can reduce breakdowns by 75 percent.

Increasing digitization of the fleet through the application of sensors and integration of data from across the supply chain could enable carriers to create a virtual model of the network. This model can be used to compute and compare multiple scenarios in real time, enhancing decision making-much like Monique's photo equipment retailer did to determine shipping options for her lens.

New urban supply concepts

The trouble with pickup timing is that it's a two-person dance. If each of the participants-the deliverer and the recipient-could operate on her own timetable, the resulting flexibility could drive efficiency elsewhere in the system. For this reason, retailers and logistics companies have pushed for models and technologies in the last mile to shorten time and distance to delivery.

One step is to slow or even reverse the proliferation of delivery destinations. That's the reasoning behind the smart locker-an accessible but secure location that provides retailers, logistics companies, businesses, and individuals with spaces to temporarily store goods for customers to pick up at a later time. With smart lockers, retailers can combine multiple drop-offs into a single delivery. The access codes recipients use to get their packages can also improve tracking. And some lockers are more than smart-they're mobile, able to meet delivery workers at different points throughout the city, minimize the time between deliveries, and allow workers to complete more jobs in less time with less stress. That means increased efficiency for the overall network, but mobile lockers can also add complexity to a system that already has many moving pieces.

Asset sharing

Just as carsharing and ridesharing have challenged traditional models of personal movement-including, for some, the very idea of owning a car-so too could greater sharing of commercial vehicles prompt a rethinking of how carriers operate.

Sharing assets also can allow transportation companies to accomplish more and take better advantage of their own networks' capacities. For example, by leveraging an adjacent network, a regional carrier could use others' assets to deliver outside its typical area, increasing the utilization of its own assets by extending its reach. Regional parcel carriers already collaborate, but technology could help reduce coordination costs and broaden their range.

However, creating an integrated platform that links multiple carriers together remains a challenge. It might make an already-complex network management challenge even more intricate, even as existing systems are under stress from growing demands for speed and real-time transparency. Add in the complexity of insurance coverage limits, liability, and regulatory requirements for certain types of shipments (for example, temperature-controlled or hazardous chemicals) and the solution quickly becomes more complicated than a typical ridesharing application.

Despite the technological and regulatory challenges of integrating shared platforms into complex distribution networks, shippers would also need to contend with other trade-offs. Many use the delivery point as an opportunity to attain customer insights and even cross-sell and up-sell, so they would need to consider alternative ways to maintain customer proximity. Additionally, some shippers may be uncomfortable with their products sharing a truck with those of a competitor.

New need, new tech: Start-ups begin to fill the void
A number of start-up companies have emerged to create platforms that connect carriers with customers and independent contractors.
First mile
Freightos -an integrated quote management system of carriers and forwarders provides greater transparency in just minutes on prices for cross-border freight shipments.
Middle mile
Convoy -a platform that connects local truck drivers to area shippers to fulfill less-than-full-truckload and full-truckload requests, introducing greater competition and optionality, as well as minimizing backhaul. Where many truckers once delivered a shipment and drove back empty, they are now able to track demand and pick up new jobs on the return trip.
Last mile
Dropoff -a courier system that uses independent contractors and their own vehicles to offer same-day delivery within a city: insured, bonded, and certified to emphasize quality.

Alternative vehicles

There is another parallel between personal transportation and freight hauling: With promises of greater fuel efficiency and improved safety, the progressive adoption of electric cars has found its way to the trucking industry.

Nonetheless, drones must surmount legal and financial hurdles as well as technological ones. To become a serious component of the delivery business, they must overcome both government regulation and high operational costs. For now, the technology really makes sense for carriers only when delivery time is critical, customers are willing to pay, and few other options exist.

Those are only the most prominent innovations. In the high-volume, high-demand jungle of the last mile, almost anything may be worth trying. For example, some carriers in China are capping their equipment-heavy package journeys with last-mile travel by a more traditional means: bicycle teams.

To give these new delivery methods a head start, some companies have turned to pre-planning technology, order management software, and dynamic routing tools that can combine with alternative options to help carriers improve delivery efficiency.

In the high-volume, high-demand jungle of the last mile, almost anything may be worth trying. Some carriers in China are capping their equipment-heavy package journeys with last-mile travel by a more traditional means: bicycle teams.

The new route

How can carriers not only adjust to these changing circumstances but profit from them? There are two elements of the delivery journey they need to understand and re-master: ownership and visibility. The ways in which these two dimensions develop and converge to influence the state of the first, middle, and last miles could have a deep influence on the fate of the transportation ecosystem.

Ownership of the delivery journey represents the concentration of asset ownership-in other words, the number of asset owners employed to complete the delivery journey. Today, ownership is relatively concentrated, but in the future, platforms will likely create opportunities for more diffuse ownership by increasing access to excess network capacity and diverse assets with low switching costs. Ultimately, this would enable asset-light models for some players while creating an environment in which niche transportation providers can proliferate.

Visibility into the delivery journey is a measure of the types of data available, the frequency that it is available, and the way that it can be used to make decisions. The rise of IoT technology and blockchain promises to create a high-volume and high-velocity data environment, and sophisticated analytics will likely create opportunities for insight such as dynamic routing and anticipatory shipping.

Combined, these two dimensions of the freight journey-ownership and visibility-suggest four potential "future states" of the movement of goods (see figure 3).

Future states for the last mile

This framework can apply to the first, middle, and last mile of the extended transportation industry. However, given the level of complexity and innovation currently taking place in the last mile, this section will focus there.

State 1: Incremental change

Customer expectations around shipping continue to rise, but inefficiencies within the ecosystem make meeting those expectations challenging; therefore, e-commerce and home delivery represent a significant but not preponderant share of total shipments.

Ecosystem players use third-party assets to augment their fleets, but transactional frictions remain. Players sign contracts far in advance to ensure access to third-party assets or rely on human brokers to manually find extra capacity in the marketplace. Platforms continue to emerge, but the challenge of integrating them into the business persists. Ultimately, these frictions result in excess capacity remaining in the transportation network and limit the integration of niche offerings into the supply chain.

Varied deployment of telematics and connected vehicle technologies inform owners and operators about the status of their own fleets, but the availability of data about the ecosystem as a whole is limited. Many processes remain paper-based, especially those involving an exchange between two players. Analytics are largely descriptive and rely on humans for interpretation and decision making. With limited data and analytical capability, inefficiencies in the transportation network abound.

State 2: A world of digital insight

Increasingly prevalent deployment of telematics and IoT technology generates a significant volume of data about the fleet. Processes are no longer paper-based but reside in the cloud, expanding the digital data set. The most forward-thinking carriers and retailers continue to build their digital capabilities as the volume of data and the computer power to process it both increase. These companies gain real-time insight into their own supply chains, which improves accuracy and permits more efficient use of capacity. Predictive analytics help them better stock inventory by type and location, which means the right products are ready at the right place and time. Analytics change the cost equation, allowing businesses to create price differentials that they can pass to customers as savings. However, the last mile remains strained because excess capacity is not shared, so local optimization, as opposed to ecosystem-wide optimization, remains the norm.

State 3: Rise of sharing

Sharing platforms become increasingly relevant and an integral part of the ecosystem, even more important than human brokers and typical contractual arrangements. These platforms reduce switching costs and drive a proliferation of third-party shipping options, making the last mile of delivery extremely fragmented. This complexity is offset by increased vehicle utilization, which reduces the cost per delivery. Platforms make integrating additional shipping options such as bikes, drones, and smart lockers easier for businesses, helping to meet ever-rising customer expectations. A few platforms emerge as the dominant players in the market and effectively coordinate the fragmented last mile. Larger, integrated players compete against the dominant platforms on price and service level. With data as the new currency, there is limited sharing between the dominant platforms and the larger, integrated players, leaving inefficiency in the ecosystem.

State 4: A new age of integration

The creation of digital markets for the movement of goods enables packages to be delivered at the right place at the right time by the right method, resulting in lower costs and greater convenience across the ecosystem. These markets are made more efficient by integrating and distributing data flows from multiple sources-from vehicles and distribution centers to individual packages, giving customers and shippers constant real-time access to the location and status of their goods and assets. Smart, mobile lockers dynamically move throughout a city, all linked by a digital platform that any in-network carrier can securely access. Carriers and retailers routinely and easily source third-party providers for the last mile, reducing both the cost and speed of delivery. If it isn't nailed down, it's a potential means of delivery. Bikers, walkers, drivers, drones, cabs-they're all available to get a package from point A to point B safely, reliably, and on time.

The carriers and retailers that can place themselves at the center of this digital ecosystem are the ones likely to thrive. While we expect consolidation among the players at the center of the ecosystem, a host of niche providers and informal, part-time couriers will likely proliferate, seizing last-mile market share.

If it isn't nailed down, it's a potential means of delivery. Bikers, walkers, drivers, drones, cabs-they're all available to get a package from point A to point B safely, reliably, and on time.

Pathways to a new age of integration for the last mile

We expect the overarching trends discussed at the beginning of this article to continue into the future, pushing the last mile from the current state into a new age of integration. The relative power of these trends could influence how the future state evolves from today into the future, but it seems clear that the landscape is shifting (see figure 4).

No one at the wheel? Autonomous vehicles and the movement of goods
Autonomous technology may someday make it practical for trucks to move packages with minimal human involvement, reducing operating costs and increasing safety on the roads.

Already, some companies are making significant progress in creating a truck that can go from coast to coast with no driver and no stops. Traditionally, labor represents about three-quarters of the $4,500 it costs to get a full tractor-trailer load from Los Angeles to New York. Autonomous vehicles could not only remove that cost, but also eliminate the stops required by driver time-out laws. A human needs eight hours downtime and can't drive more than 11 hours a day. By moving 24 hours a day, autonomous trucks could increase the capacity of the US transportation network by 100 percent for 25 percent of the cost.

But making these systems widespread is easier said than done. The training, costs, and capabilities it could take to implement autonomy would squeeze smaller operators who lack the scale to "go digital" and may be unable to attract or retain the talent that a more sophisticated operation requires. Low margins across the industry, limited capital reserves, talent challenges, and the realities of daily financial needs may put smaller players at risk of becoming commodity transportation methods.

And as advanced as the technology appears to be, companies may find it's the easy part. Having the capital to implement autonomy at scale may be the larger obstacle to widespread adoption. No matter how high-tech one truck's system may be, autonomy won't work unless OEMs, infrastructure planners, and other third parties make corresponding advances.

And for years to come, liability and security rules, as well as labor unions, may require that even a fully autonomous vehicle still have a driver on board, in which case the promised labor savings won't fully materialize. However, autonomous technology could enable regulation changes allowing drivers to work additional hours. Even one additional hour of work could increase productivity by nearly 10 percent, helping to put a dent in the forecasted driver shortage.

Because of these and other limitations, autonomy may make its earliest advances in the first and middle miles, where driving is less complex. For example, driverless trucks could move goods over highway routes to distribution centers. While technology would drive this potential, the limiting factors may be more traditional: the perception of safety, for one, and the availability of the necessary capital.

A different possible future would see the last mile as the frontier for autonomous vehicles. Technologies and practices first developed for the taxi industry may help freight carriers negotiate the complexity of in-town delivery. Or autonomous delivery robots could assist drivers with heavy loads or postal carriers with arms full of mail.

Ultimately, if autonomous shipping becomes sufficiently ubiquitous, the capacity it represents could become a system of "mobile inventory," in which vehicles on the move amount to rolling warehouses that make up a truly dynamic supply chain.

What it means, and where to start

The farther you look down the road of speculation, the easier it is to indulge the imagination, and the fuzzier the details become. But there are compelling reasons to believe that the movement of goods, particularly over the last mile, will evolve through the future states we have described.

We already see companies actively looking for asset-light transportation models. And at the same time, the growth of digitization and analytics shows no sign of slowing, as companies continue to invest in the hardware, software, and capabilities required to build more transparency into their networks.

Given the potential pace of change in the last mile, retailers should consider:

Making stores multipurpose. With the rise in e-commerce, the store's role could evolve to become a showroom to sample products before buying. Additionally, it could serve as a departure point for same-day shipments to customers, even enabling alternate forms of delivery such as bicycle or drone. Ultimately, companies may need to rethink how their store strategy supports a more compressed supply chain while offering a differentiated customer experience. This is especially important given pressures to monetize square footage, but companies will likely need to build the capabilities to manage the complexities that come with a next-generation retail space and a more complex delivery network.

Making delivery a differentiator for your customers. Delivery is no longer adjacent to the value proposition. More and more, sellers are using differentiated delivery to win customers through speed, tracking, white-glove service, and even high-end packaging. This can be especially important if transportation services are a critical part of your value proposition-for example, through omnichannel retail models.

For carriers, these changes in the ecosystem suggest they should consider:

Refreshing partnership strategies. Some customers may hesitate to make investments in new capabilities given the fast pace of change, so partnering with your most forward-thinking customers to build mutual capabilities could well serve both parties. For example, a carrier could work with a retailer to test drone delivery for select customers who value the fastest possible delivery and who fancy themselves early adopters of new technology.

Building the fleet of the future. Many carriers are already investing in telematics to build a connected fleet, and those investments will likely continue; collecting the data is the first step toward insight. Those that are more forward-looking may also look to experiment with semi-autonomous or electric vehicles, or with sharing platforms, to stay on the leading edge. Exploring small-scale pilots in targeted areas-for example, where weather and traffic are predictable or charging infrastructure abundant-can be helpful.

Using data as a differentiator. As telematics become commonplace and IoT applications proliferate, the volume of available data will likely grow exponentially. To maximize value, companies need to draw actionable insights from this data, in real time. Increasingly, collating the data, analyzing it, and making a decision a day or week later is becoming table stakes. Creating algorithms to make real-time decisions (for example, re-routing) could be the major differentiator. For carriers, that likely means building capabilities to rapidly analyze and act on the information being collected and-just as daunting-creating a culture of data-based decision making. But the potential rewards could be substantial: Carrier executives can use the insights to make the fleet more efficient or to grow the business by identifying customer needs.

Less room for error, but plenty of room for improvement

Today, customers such as Monique often expect a level of service that their parents would have considered the stuff of science fiction. They are more likely to have living arrangements and daily routines that make traditional porch-drop delivery untenable. And they see delivery as an integral part of the seller's responsibility. If you're the carrier, that means the companies that ship with you are putting more than packages on your trucks. More than ever, you are delivering their reputations.

To meet this new world of demand, ecosystem players should understand the ways different new technologies and practices are evolving. And just as importantly, they should master the timing. Knowing the stages of change that lie ahead for the market as a whole, and especially for the last mile, may be the key to knowing which investments to make at which time. Without an informed view, it's too easy to overextend or fall behind.

Will your customers receive same-day, driverless delivery of every good they buy starting next week? Probably not. But these trends point ahead in very clear lines. To flourish, companies should trust in one of their oldest skills: seeing the road ahead.

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It's easy to envision self-driving trucks safely and efficiently carrying shipments down US highways. But that's only part of any product's journey between manufacturer and customer. How will the new mobility ecosystem handle the whole trip, including the trickiest part of all: last-mile delivery?