Hackathon – Mobility of the Future #MOTF18

#MOTF18 – Belgium ’s got talent

From the 22^nd until the 24^th of February a gathering of smart and creative people took place in Groot-Bijgaarden, near Brussels. More than 2.000 people joined the event Mobility of the Future. Besides the conference program, there was a hackathon to brainstorm about mobility challenges in Belgium. And yes… Belgium is one of the most congested areas all over the world, so mobility is a huge challenge.

The hackathon kicked off on Thursday night with 28 teams and 260 participants. 4 different challenges were defined:

1. Bicycle City: The Flemish government launched the challenge to map and optimize continuously the cycling infrastructure.
2. Road Safety: How can we use technology to learn more about accidents, dangerous situations (near-accidents) and the circumstances in which they occur? And what role can technologies such as IoT, AI and sensors play in this? This challenge was launched by Telenet and the Flemish government
3. Optimization: We want to drive more economically, lower the costs of petrol or diesel and drive much more environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, obtaining the data from a vehicle is very difficult. Interpreting this data is even more difficult. How can we improve the efficiency of the driver, the vehicle and the fleet by using smart technology and statistics? The challenge was launched by Febiac’s “We are the future”-program.
4. The SocialCar-challenge: Public transport and shared mobility. Imagine a world where everyone can go from point a to b without difficulty. On the road to mobility-as-a-service, we face challenges such as infrastructure, limited accessibility for people with disabilities, the use of multiple apps to reach a destination, and more. Help make public transport and multimodality more flexible and accessible for everyone! The challenge was launched by De Lijn, SAP and Mpact.

In this article we’d like to focus on the 4^th challenge about public transport and shared mobility, supported by the Horizon2020 project SocialCar. Mpact, as one of the SocialCar-partners, was the initiator of this challenge. In this project the partners developed a journey planner-app “RideMyRoute” which combines carpooling and public transport options. This technology is an opensource development. Besides the development of the codes, the project also aims to create new business plans around multimodal route planning. To achieve this, Mpact launched challenge 4 to invite creative minds to brainstorm about public transport and shared mobility.

8 from the 28 participating teams chose to work around the SocialCar-challenge. Because of a partnership with Y4PT (Youth for Public Transport), one member of the winning group could be selected to participate in the international UITP-hackathon in Dubai later this year.

38 hours and many coaching sessions after launching the challenges, the teams were invited to pitch their idea for the challenge 4 pre-jury. This jury consisted of representatives from SAP, Y4PT, Loqutus and Mpact. The mission of this jury was to select and coach two teams to go the final contest together with winners from the other challenges. Three criteria were important for the jury-members:

1. The link with the challenge
2. The innovative aspect
3. The business plan

Results of the SocialCar-challenge

Algodrive, by Technische School Mechelen. Algodrive is an integrated transport app – mobility-as-a-service. Algodrive wants to integrate all travel modes in one app, with realtime travel info and even the possibility to share your private car with other users. Revenue comes from subscription and transaction fees paid by the users and a fee from the operators.

E-Commute by Avelon. E-Commute is a challenge between employees and employers to achieve the green mindset. It’s a rewarding program with green points that includes optimal commuting routes. The platform consists of a leaderboard for the company and the individual employee. Revenue comes for the companies, governmental support and sponsorship (rewards).

Gooyc by Arcadis, MIVB, … The objective of Gooyc is to Get you Out Of Your Car. Therefore the team will launch ”Rewarded mobility”. An app that combines multimodal route planning with rewards for sustainable choices. As rewards they’re thinking of commercial offers from Starbuck’s and others. A coffee for a bus ride!

MERAKI– moveABILITY – Meraki is group of Cronos- internships with an immigration background. This international group wants to create a travel-app with buddy’s for people with a wheelchair. Their objective is to create a global inclusive society. They want to turn these buddies into ‘first class citizens” who get rewards, like first class train tickets.

Minder or Mobility Tinder – Minder is a carpool app that works like tinder. Users can swipe between interests which will make every match convenient and nice. The Minder app is playful, efficient and approachable. Minder will create revenue by asking small transaction fees.

My impact – My choice by Deloitte innovation. This team wants to create a mobility-as-a-service app with dynamic taxation linked to it. As alternative of a flat traffic tax, it wants to introduce dynamic transport charging and link it to a transport app. Their value proposition is to give control to the people about their taxes. Users have the possibility to see the tax per ride or selected period. It instantly links transport behavior with the real cost.

TSM1: This group of students wants to create one company that offers cars, scooters and bicycles in one shared mobility app. Via their app you can always see the shared cars, scooters or bicycles that are closeby.

Sharing is caring Provid-it: PT + shared mobility. The last group that pitched its idea wants to create a multimodal travel planner that integrates real time travel info with carpooling. For carpooling they want to offer users the possibility to create different groups: family-and-friends and business.

And the winner is…

The pre-jury of this challenge selected two teams to compete with the winners of the other challenges. E-COmmuters and My Impact – My Choice answered the most to these three criteria. Both groups got the opportunity to give a 7 minutes pitch for the jury and the many participants. The overall jury was composed by representatives from the Flemish government, Cronos, SAP, Febiac Telenet, Y4PT and Mpact.

The overall winner was Induction, a team that created an innovative tool to detect car accidents and warns bystanders and emergency services immediately and monitors everything for insurance reasons. E-COmmuters became the winner of the SocialCar challenge. One of the team members will go to Dubai to continue the hacking.