Pedestrians and bicyclists experience serious obstacles when travelling to and through the harbor areas of Rotterdam.
When moving from East to West and back, they also have to make substantial detours in order to cross the many harbors with their usually inaccessible industrial areas.
Imagine a transportation system comprising dozens, may be hundreds, of electric, fully-autonomous, ferries that operate in the same manner as the elevators in an extremely high and large building; the main difference is that, rather than from floor to floor, they move autonomously from stop to stop along and across the various waters of Rotterdam (using technology like that of autonomous cars). At each stop, people may press a button that they want to go left or right and, on the ferry, they press the stop where they want to go to. This is the Autonomous Hitch-hikers Ferry Concept or AH-F.
Despite this simple description, the realization is rather complex. A full solution requires amongst others
- small (<12 persons) battery driven ferries that are easy accessible for pedestrians, bicyclists, elderly, children etc., each ferry has to be unsinkable with protective means against falling into the water
- small AH-F-stops at quays with protective means against falling into the water, with re-charge facilities for a AH-Ferry, with payment functionalities and with gate facilities to limit the number of persons on a AH-Ferry
- small facilities to interact with traffic control, to call for support if people on board have serious problems and to get support in case of technical problems
- small facilities on board, at each AH-F stop and at Smart phones that inform the users when/where a AH-Ferry will arrive and how much space is on board
PK Marine has assigned an enthusiast group of 5 PI-students of the Rotterdam University of Applied Science with the task to investigate whether or not this concept is attractive to cross to reduce the biking distance between Schiedam, Rotterdam and the RDM-campus area and thus to lighten the traffic pressure on the few river crossings in that area. Their supervisor is Pim Warffemius.
Success Ville, Helena, Shaq, Siemen and Jesse with your PI assignment.