On April 12, Mag. Claudia Schmidt, Member of the European Parliament, and Josef Schöchl, President of the Landtag, visited Salzburg Research. As a member of the European Committee on Tourism and Transport, she learned about the research topic of digitalisation in mobility.

Digitization is one of the big enablers in mobility. It makes networking and linking different modes of transport and forms of mobility possible. This creates an attractive offer for the users.

Autonomous Driving: Digibus

The self-propelled Digibus, with which Salzburg Research conducted intensive tests in Koppl for seven months in Koppl, met with great interest in 2017. Self-driving minibuseses could be used in local public transport as a means of transporting or transferring to intermodal mobility nodes or to the development of local centers. They could complement existing public transport and make it more attractive. The technology is still not ready for production yet. On dedicated, closed and marked routes operation would already be possible. However, on public roads, in mixed traffic – as on the test track in Koppl – this will only be realistic in a few years. This requires intensive research and development work.

The follow-up project Digibus Austria is about to start: A top-class consortium led by Salzburg Research will research and test the reliable and safe operation of automated shuttles over the next 3 years. For this purpose, from May 2018, a self-driving minibus, this time from the manufacturer EasyMile, will be on the roads of Salzburg. Details under: www.digibus.at