Indra has signed a collaboration agreement with MASMOVIL, one of the leading 5G operators in Spain, to drive smarter, more connected and sustainable mobility by developing advanced solutions and services based on 5G communications for different modes of transport.
Both companies will create a test site, a new innovation space for validation and testing at Indra’s facilities in the Community of Madrid, equipped with state-of-the-art 5G technology and the necessary hardware and software to deploy and validate new smart mobility solutions and services that can later be transferred to a real environment.
Indra and MASMOVIL have already collaborated on different innovation initiatives in the field of autonomous cars and solutions for Low Emission Zones and their real-time measurement that encourages more sustainable mobility. In addition to strengthening this relationship, the agreement aims to turn the new 5G environment into a space for open collaboration with startups, SMEs and universities, facilitating the development of RDI activities, proofs of concept, demonstrators and pilots to exploit the full potential of the 5G network in solutions for more connected mobility.
5G is a key technology for the new smart and sustainable mobility.
In Spain, all transport infrastructures, airports, railroad stations and roads are expected to have 5G by 2025, and, for the European Commission, the deployment and development of transport corridors with this technology (5G Corridors) for connected and autonomous mobility is a priority.
“This agreement with a leading operator like MASMOVIL offers us the opportunity to add capabilities to accelerate the development and deployment of a new generation of solutions based on 5G, which will represent a qualitative leap in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals on the basis of sustainable, connected, autonomous, accessible and green mobility, both in the transportation of people and in the movement of goods. The Next Generation funds are the opportunity that all the agents involved in mobility must know how to take advantage of responsibly, through public-private cooperation, to make the pilots and projects that will change the mobility of tomorrow a reality today,” states Berta Barrero, Managing Director of Indra’s Mobility business.
Pablo Freire, Chief Strategy Officer of MASMOVIL Group, emphasizes that “MASMOVIL Group is strongly committed to the development of new 5G services, supporting and encouraging applications that allow them to exploit all their capabilities. In this context, the agreement with Indra, a leading technology engineering company, will allow us to support the development of solutions in one of the sectors, transportation and connected mobility, in which the application of 5G together with 4.0 technologies such as Big Data, Edge Computing, IoT and AI will mean a great revolution.”
Increased 5G technology
5G technology increases the speed of communication services by about 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), reduces communication latency to between 1 and 4 milliseconds and makes multi-user and multi-connection services possible. In addition, it offers greater network hedge and capacity and improved application performance. It generates a large volume of data that can be exploited thanks to big data and facilitates distributed data processing for real-time applications. It also contributes to a significant reduction in energy consumption.
Among the new developments to be addressed at the new test site are solutions to reinforce road safety in view of the advent of connected and autonomous mobility through secure communications between vehicles and infrastructure that allow optimal real-time sharing of data on the traffic situation, congestion, incidents, obstacles on the road and emergency braking. All this without the need for a massive deployment of equipment on the road, thanks to the advantages of Edge Computing.
In the rail sector, work will focus on wireless communication services to promote digitization and new railway signalling services, cargo inspection and rolling stock monitoring. As for the urban and interurban environment, it will apply 5G technology to improve video surveillance services in stations and inside buses.
With a global approach, future developments aimed at optimizing asset management and massive data downloads for intelligent infrastructure maintenance will be promoted. For example, it is planned to create a digital twin in which data are updated in real-time to plan and undertake maintenance tasks more efficiently according to the specific conditions of the infrastructure at any given time.
In addition, the advantages of digitalization and 5G will be exploited to improve the user experience, to offer total support to travelers at all stages of their journey, to provide entertainment services and Wi-Fi connectivity, online purchases of transport tickets and real-time validation with biometric technology.
These developments will benefit from the previous experience of Indra and MASMOVIL in different proofs of concept with transport operators and in innovation projects in collaboration with vehicle manufacturers. For example, Indra and MASMOVIL are part of the consortium of the R3CAV RDI project, led by Renault, in which they contribute with their technology to enable high levels of automated driving (L4), improve bus management, safety and passenger service, making use of 5G technology.
Source: INDRA
