Barcelona mobility challenge offers €200,000 for pilot projects

The third edition of Barcelona’s Innova Lab Mobility challenge will focus on reducing noise pollution and improving the efficiency of urban freight, organisers announced at the recent Smart City Expo in Barcelona.

The new challenge – set to be launched in January 2025 – will invite companies from across the globe to demonstrate innovative ways to tackle each issue, with €200,000 (US$210,000) in funding available for pilots.

“It’s all about diversity – about bringing different stakeholders to share problems that we have and look for solutions from the perspective of the public interest,” said Michael Donaldson, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Barcelona.

“What we are creating here is an open dialogue. We want to know your points of view, your experience and your knowledge to resolve the problems that we all share as a city.”

Exact details of the new challenge are expected to be released early next year, but the focus will be on solving noise pollution and urban freight issues.

“Looking at the acoustic pollution we have in the city – we have realised that 85 percent of this noise is caused by mobility,” said Eugeni Rico, Mobility Strategy Engineer, Barcelona City Council.

“We want to find innovative ways to measure and identify this data to help us in planning and managing mobility.

“All ideas are welcome, whether this be through AI, sensors, etc.”

Rico added that with over 145,000 daily deliveries in the city, the urban freight challenge was vast.

“A lot of our pedestrian areas are full of restaurants, full of cafeterias, and the distribution of goods to this specific sector is not easy.

“They usually each have their own suppliers, and a lot of supplies being delivered throughout the day.

“We have a huge occupancy of this public space [by delivery vehicles] that should be for the pedestrians.

“We need to optimise these logistics and find innovative solutions that can be measured by the data that this sector can provide us, and use this data to help us to optimise the rules.”

Current projects

Established in 2022, the Lab provides guidance and technical support to businesses, start-ups, cooperatives, research centres, universities, associations and consortiums, helping them to test public-interest innovation projects in real conditions across the city.

Run by the city’s innovation agency, BIT Habitat, the Lab has so far hosted two mobility challenges – one on improving the city’s bus network through tech, and the other on boosting the safety of motorbikes.

“One of the tools that we use to foster innovation, to find solutions, to increase the quality target of the city – is the global challenge approach,” said Isabella Longo, Project Director, BIT Habitat.

In June 2024, two North American companies – Hayden AI and Buspas – were selected as winners of the Lab’s bus challenge.

US firm Hayden AI is currently testing its mobile perception technology on buses across the city as part of a six-month pilot.

“The system that we’ve created is meant to help transit agencies and cities deal with vehicles that are parked illegally in bus lanes and bus stops, and to do that, we have a piece of hardware that we mount inside the bus behind the windshield,” said Charles Territo, Chief Growth Officer, Hayden AI.

“That piece of hardware includes both a context camera and a licence plate recognition camera. It includes a compute box where we do onboard processing to ensure we comply with GDPR, and it includes an antenna that we can use to identify the location of the vehicle with ten centimetre accuracy.”

Canadian company Buspas is also trialling what it calls a “comprehensive, accessible information system” that provides real-time auditory and visual information across the bus network.

“We wanted to look at how we could use the bus stop as a strategic location to increase ridership, safety, security and customer satisfaction,” said Youval Abenhaim, CEO, BusPas.

“Now that the AI is here as well as the technology and IoT, we’re able to take the bus stop and make it a data hub.”

Image: Yasonya | Dreamstime.com