HitchHikeBox

In addition to environmental and health damage caused by emissions such as noise, CO2, and air pollutants, the quality of life is also increasingly restricted by road traffic due to a large amount of land used (e.g., for roads, parking areas, loading/unloading areas). With the progressive growth in transportation, especially in commercial logistics transport, the situation has become even more acute in recent years. The development of technical, urban planning, and social concepts to satisfy society's mobility and logistical needs while also increasing environmental protection and urban quality of life is THE challenge of the next decade.

In the project HitchhikeBox, an intermodal hitchhike logistics system based on AI-based journey planning of self-organizing delivery boxes is to be developed. This is a technological platform for an integrated electric mobility and logistics system that enables reduced private/commercial trips while maintaining mobility and logistics, as well as reduced parking space requirements, by maximizing the efficiency of current vehicles without sacrificing flexibility. The main innovation of the project is bringing forth an automated, decentralized dispatching system for self-organized "intelligent" logistics boxes (HitchhikeBox) that enable intermodal Multi-Hop-Routing “hitchhiking” via local Micro-Hub-Depots. Moreover, it aims to increase the use of all-electric vehicles by participating regional vehicle operators and to take advantage of synergy benefits by bundling individual journeys that can be coordinated. The Institute for Systems and Software Engineering (ISSE) is developing a software solution for the “intelligent” reusable logistics box for its independent and automatic hitchhiking from an initial to the final point. This solution will have intelligent strategies for the execution of a transportation task. Also, the development and conceptual design of this dynamic-adaptive self-organizing system based on smart contracts.