Aeronautics & Space Forum

To start this new issue, we are very pleased to invite you to attend to the Aeronautics Forum we are preparing and in which we would be delighted to count on you.

The Forum will take place next March 19 at the CIDAUT Foundation facilities located in the Boecillo Technology Park. Our intention is this Forum will become a place to share experiences, ideas and knowledge, creating new synergies, relationships and collaborations between the participants.

With this in mind, we have managed to bring together representatives of the main entities and companies in the sector who, without a doubt, will provide attendees with very interesting first-hand information on R&D, innovation, sustainability and current and future technological trends in the short, medium and long term, etc.

Please note that the number of places is very limited. Many people have already reserved their places and very few are still available. Therefore, if you are interested, we encourage you to register as soon as possible through the following link:

http://www.cidaut.es/AeronauticayEspacio

We hope we have the opportunity to meet you in the event.

CIDAUT Foundation

See you in the Forum!

Valencia hosts a new edition of the eMobility congress and CIDAUT attends as a speaker in two sessions

Last February, a new edition of the eMobility Expo World Congress took place in Valencia.  The eMobility World Congress 2024 is an international conference that provides the most relevant and influential platform for the future of mobility, through sustainability and technology. From 13 to 15 February the eMobility Expo World Congress ended with more than 5,794 mobility professionals from 16 countries, consolidating the success of an event that has become a benchmark for the mobility sector worldwide. Along with industry professionals, 344 world experts participated in the congress and 179 international companies, such as Ford, Toyota, Iberdrola, Cepsa, Balearia, Air Nostrum, Power Electronics, BP, and Ficosa, among others, presented their latest innovations in sustainable mobility during the event.

Alongside discussions on ground-based transportation, the event also addressed challenges and opportunities in air mobility, highlighting the pivotal role of aviation in the evolving mobility landscape.

As part of this dynamic event, Mattia Mazzeschi on behalf of CIDAUT, participated as moderator of the session titled “Megatrends in Air Mobility”. The session delved into the promising future of air mobility, exploring significant milestones, emerging business opportunities, and technological advancements. In between the climate crisis and evolving societal sensitivities, discussions centered on the transformative impact of mobility-as-a-service, intermodal transportation, and the emergence of new technologies driving innovation in the aerospace sector. At the core of the dialogue were the megatrends shaping the future of air mobility and the identification of emerging markets poised for growth. Participants exchanged insights on the critical drivers of change in the aeronautic sector, emphasizing the need for collaborative efforts to navigate challenges and capitalize on opportunities in the evolving landscape.

In parallel and within the framework of eMobility, the H2 Hydrogen World Congress took place. This congress presented a comprehensive overview of the hydrogen industry, offering both plenary and parallel sessions. Attendees had the opportunity to delve into specific areas of interest or explore the entire value chain of the industry, spanning from major corporations to cutting-edge scientific research.

On behalf of CIDAUT, Henar Olmedo participated in the session that took place on the 15th entitled: “The hydrogen colours (white, green, gray…): the generation is the key”. This roundtable explored the diverse spectrum of hydrogen production, characterized by colours such as white, green, emphasizing that the method of generation is pivotal. It delved into how each colour represents a different production technique and its environmental implications. The session was shared with other speakers from ITE, the University of Barcelona and Solar Outdoor Media & Klear Energy.

Fleet monitoring to make last-mile logistics more sustainable

Everyone knows that last-mile logistics negatively affects cities’ air quality. Its relevance in the total greenhouse gas emissions is driving logistics operators to electrify their fleets. Whereas in the past, the customers valued the speed of the service more highly, there is now a greater concern for sustainability and the environment when making an online purchase. In parallel, making urban logistics more sustainable requires the promotion of the public administration at this point, for economic reasons.

In the framework of EU Urbane project, CIDAUT is studying how much the air quality in Valladolid would improve if urban delivery services were electrified. As part of the study, a number of specialised prototype vehicles, designed and developed by IFEVS, will be put into circulation. As a special feature, these vehicles are partially powered by photovoltaic energy. Although the brand has several models, only the van and cargo bike will be put into circulation in Valladolid.

The study is focused on Boecillo Technological Park and the central area of Valladolid, which has unique characteristics. Specifically, these are an important historical centre, with a lot of distribution demand by hotels, restaurants and cafes, and a lot of pedestrians. CIDAUT has reached an agreement with the Spanish postal service so that they make deliveries of letters and parcels on the IFEVS vehicles.  Their routes are being monitored; both with the vehicles they normally use and soon with the prototype vehicles, in order to establish a comparative of how much the city’s air quality would improve if electric vehicles were used.

As mentioned above, this study is supported by EU Urbane project, funding from Horizon Europe under Grant Agreement nº 101069782.

Smart charging as key technology for the development of Green Buildings and Neighborhoods (GBNs)

In the latest years, a growing number of cities are leveraging on mobility-related interventions at urban and peri-urban scale to enhance many aspects of citizens’ life such as sustainability, inclusiveness, social cohesion, or public health. In PROBONO, mobility at Living Lab scale is envisioned as a key enabler of GBNs, thanks to the implementation of smart charging-related functionalities in the local energy network.

It is widely known that the electrification of transport is considered a major driver of the green transition. But at the same time it is also clear that the deployment of vast amounts of EVs in our neighborhoods will have a massive impact on the current electricity systems, mainly in terms of installed capacity and power handling. This is due to the fact that users’ EV charging patterns may lead to intense peaks in power demand, which will require extra investments in infrastructure to update electric networks, provided that EV charging infrastructure continue to be based on regular, unidirectional charging points.

Smart charging, enabled by bi-directional chargers can be the key to avoid this kind of problems. By using bi-directional chargers, power can be transferred either from the grid to the EVs, or the other way around. The main objective of smart charging is to manage EV charging demands intelligently, so that it doesn’t destabilize the overall electric network. For this purpose, two main strategies are put in place: load balancing (shifting EV charging demand to off-peak hours), and peak shaving (use energy stored in EV to reduce the intensity of peak demand).

Through smart charging, EVs with bidirectional charging capability can be used as multi-purpose energy banks able to take out or feed energy into the electricity grid, for various applications:

  • Vehicle-to-Load (V2L): the EV battery is employed to feed any regular appliances or other EVs by transferring power through a generic power plug, no matter the location of the EV and the load. It does not need the installation of a bi-directional charger to operate, and it can be used to power critical loads during an outage, or to power appliances when on the road.
  • Vehicle-to-Home (V2H): vehicle-to-home consists on extracting energy from an EV battery, to power a home during a certain time period, instead of being fed by the electricity grid. One of most interesting applications of this technology is power outage prevention.
  • Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G): vehicle-to-grid takes place when a portion of the EV battery energy is introduced into the electricity grid, usually in exchange for an incentive for the EV owner. V2G charging can help to minimize the impact on the power generation systems during peak demands, hence increasing the grid flexibility, resilience and stability.

In practice, the management of EVs charging can be integrated in the general GBN energy management system to maximize energy savings. To this end, the system can prioritise the charge of the vehicles attending to users’ needs, as well as energy availability considering a high portion of the energy being produced by renewable sources. It also allows optimizing the operating cost of the network, and avoiding grid congestions at GBN scale. At the same time, smart charging can generate incomes to GBN inhabitants, mainly through V2G energy transfer, therefore lowering the ownership costs of EVs.

The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon 2020 Green Deal  under Grant Agreement 101037075

Improvement of safety and resiliency of transport and Smart mobility through driver behavioral models.

Automated driving is one of the hot topics in transport research and development. The evolution of advanced driving assistance systems, ADAS, is gradually increasing the automation level of vehicles on the roads. In a near future, highly automated vehicles will be present in the traffic, but the transformation will not be instantaneous and for the coming few decades, vehicles with different level of automation will share the infrastructure giving place to a transition phase where the human and the artificial intelligence will need to coexist.  

CIDAUT, in the frame of European Project BERTHA, develops innovative driver behavioral models to improve safety and resiliency in connected, cooperative and automated mobility (CCAM). The aim of this development is to create a scalable and probabilistic driver behavioral model based mostly on Bayesian Belief Networks, able to cover different aspects of human driving performance at complex scenarios. The models will be implemented to validate technological and practical feasibility of different advanced driving assistance systems, ADAS.

The project is open source oriented and it will share the behavioral model with the scientific community in order to facilitate the easy growth of the project’s scope. An interrelated demonstration in also included to show this model approach as a reference to design human-like, easy predictable and acceptable behavior of automated driving functions in mixed traffic scenarios.

To tackle this ambitious objective, CIDAUT will cooperate with fourteen partners from seven countries and two continents, in the frame of BERTHA project. 

The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon Europe under Grant Agreement nº 101076360.

CIDAUT works on a simulation model chain for investigating automated vehicle safety

Automated driving is currently one of the major research topics in the automotive field, mainly motivated by the improvement of the safety [[1]]. It is supposed that automated driving will eliminate human error thank to the use of technology; however, as long as the automated vehicles continue to have to share the road with conventional cars, accidents will continue to occur. Against this background, CIDAUT together with i2CAT and CTAG have carried out a simulation model chain aimed at determining the occupant injuries after a side collision in an automated vehicle and in a complex urban environment at different speeds. To do this, it was necessary to digitally simulate both the environment where the accident takes place and the vehicle’s communications (i2CAT), as well as the autonomous car itself (CTAG). For its part, CIDAUT was responsible for determining the damage to the occupant caused by the accident.

The fact that the simulation tool focus on side collisions is principally due to the accidentology study carried out as part of the European OSCCAR project, in which CIDAUT participated. Specifically, it concluded that considering mixed traffic conditions, side impacts will continue to be common in autonomous vehicles (it is estimated that around 20% of the total).

Under that premise, the developed tool chain is able to simulate the consequences of a side impact over the occupant at different positions, and taking into account the communications with other vehicles or infrastructure. Briefly, the fact of being able to simulate V2X Communications allows us to know when the vehicle is informed about the risk of collision. In this way, we can adjust the parameters of the restraint system more realistically, taking into account that this information will allow us to deploy the airbags earlier.

This work is part of @INTEGRA project, an initiative that pursue projects and activities that respond to the major challenges of a new, safer, smarter, more sustainable, connected and automated mobility. The project, which is funded by CDTI through Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación in the frame of the funding for Excellence in Research Centres “Cervera”, involves the three research centres mentioned above: CTAG, CIDAUT and i2CAT, in addition to ITENE.


[1] Watzening D., Horn M. (2016) Automated driving: safer and more efficient future driving, Springer Interntional Pubishing. ISBN: 978-3-319-31893-6.