The AutoTRUST project aims to develop and demonstrate a novel AI-leveraged self-adaptive framework of advanced vehicle technologies and solutions which optimize usability, perception, and experience on-board, and when boarding/off-boarding, in terms of security, privacy, well-being, health and assistance. AutoTRUST provides enhanced inclusiveness and trust in the interaction between users and new automated modes of road transport and mobility services in the transition from human-driven to automated vehicles. Safety and security of vehicle occupants in all circumstances even when the vehicle is driverless by helping to prevent dangerous and inconvenient situations will be of paramount importance. Intense cooperation between users, vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, researchers, and other stakeholders to co-design vehicles with solutions that optimize the on-board experience will be adopted. Moreover, an in-depth knowledge of the benefits of new vehicle technologies and solutions in terms of on-board experience, accessibility, inclusiveness, and trust will be acquired to enable wider user acceptability and contribute to the creation of future standards.

MASTRO Project aim is to develop intelligent bulk materials for the transport sector based on the novel concepts like self-sensing, self-deicing, self-curing, self-healing and self-protection methodologies to increase consumer safety, component life-span and performance while reducing maintenance and manufacturing costs. The functionality of the developed components will be demonstrated under relevant conditions at prototype level for the aerospace, automotive and transport transport networks. These developments will be supported by theoretical material models to capture the self-responsive functionalities. The outputs of the Project will consist of numerous applications in these sectors. The matrices addressed consist of lightweight polymer composites like glass/carbon fibre reinforced polymers and thermoplastic materials (including melt-spinning for textiles used in the transport sector) together with asphalt and concrete formulations incorporating electrical carbon-based conductive nanomaterials. These self-responsive functionalities are based on two physical phenomena: piezoresistivity and Joule effect. The aim of self-responsiveness properties can be summarized as follows: Self-sensing: to confer to the intelligent components the ability to monitor/store data about its own condition in terms of vibrations, defects, fatigue, creep and strain. Self-deicing: to avoid the ice layer formation or the loss of performance due to cold weather. Self-curing: to increase quality and durability while reducing manufacturing cost of the polymer composites and cement concrete formulations by improving the curing process step. Self-healing: to aid the repair of polymer composites and asphalt concrete formulations by healing those materials without the need of an external and expensive maintenance operation. Self-protection: to minimize the failure occurrence in case of electrostatic charge accumulation or lightning impacts by discharging the voltage through the smart component

The steadily growing demand related to increasing urbanisation is turning the management of logistics flows in urban areas a more complex process, with higher demand for adaptability and flexibility for the new solutions to contribute to optimise the overall transport capacity, reducing operational costs and negative impacts (health, safety). URBANIZED develops and demonstrates the next generation of modular vehicle architectures for urban-sized commercial e-vehicles, satisfying design principles of optimisation and right-sizing vehicles for their mission, delivering outputs in 3 dimensions: 1) high-performance e-powertrain components and control architectures, through the use of advanced co-design approaches; 2) interchangeable, plug & play cargo modules for different urban freight transport use case scenarios and 3) integrated energy and fleet management strategies using data, connectivity and learning algorithms. URBANIZED follows a holistic design approach working at 3 levels (systems, vehicle, fleet) during the entire project: starting with the definition of specific mission profiles within 2 main pre-selected use cases (last-mile delivery of retail, e-commerce, courier and post; HoReCa and other urban on-demand services), during the optimisation loops of the design process, and until project demonstrations, to be performed both physical and in virtual environments, covering the specific requirements of operators. URBANIZED brings a complementary multi-disciplinary consortium of 9 partners from 6 EU countries, involving all relevant actors from the value chain, from academic, to industrial (TIER1, OEMs) and logistics operators. Aiming at broadening dissemination and impact, URBANIZED defines an extended partnership, involving 3 satellite cities (Groningen, Madrid and Bergen) committed to CO2-emissions free logistics in their city centres by 2030 and a high volume OEM (Ford) highly positioned in the LCV market, all interested in replicability of project results.

The project OPEVA aims for innovation on aggregating information from the vehicle, not only from the battery but also from other internal sensors and behaviours, to create a model of performance and consumption specific to the individual vehicle and its driver (TD1). It aims to optimize the individual driving episode using the out-vehicle data such as state of the road, weather, charging station location and occupancy etc. that are collated from the back-end systems (TD2). OPEVA will further address the challenges associated with the communication between the vehicle and the infrastructure to gather data from the back-end systems (TD3). It aims for innovation in the use of recharging stations and related applications (TD4). It further aims to achieve better understanding on what the battery and its constituent cells are really doing during real world use for an improved battery management system (TD5). Finally, TD6 covers the driver-oriented human factors for optimizing the electrical vehicle usage. The TDs from the most deeply embedded in the vehicle to its support in the cloud, which need to interwork in an optimal fashion to deliver in one decade a better level of systemic optimisation for personal mobility that took ten decades to achieve with fossil fuels. On the other hand, economic factors (N-TD1), legal and ethical aspects (N-TD2), EV related development by the human (N-TD3), and societal and environmental factors (N-TD4) will be taken into consideration in the OPEVA methods for a higher acceptance and the awareness of the society regarding the these developments.