UrbanLoop
Algorithms at the heart of urban mobility
UrbanLoop is a concept of intelligent urban mobility , supported by four engineering schools of Lorraine INP : ENSEM , Mines Nancy , ENSG and TELECOM Nancy and co-financed by the Grand Est region as part of the PACTE Grandes Écoles. An unparalleled field of innovation within the University of Lorraine for a hundred student engineers and teacher-researchers.
The project aims to design and test a new type of end-to-end urban transport by individual capsules moving quickly on a network of rails formed of interconnected loops.
UrbanLoop wants to be an intelligent, clean and fast urban transport and at the service of the community.
To do this, it combines many advantages for transport in medium-sized cities:
- reduction in journey times in town (in Nancy: make place Stanislas – plateau de Brabois in less than 4 minutes!): no stopping or connection, constant speed throughout the journey, a specific network (underground, partially buried or overhead), no more parking problems,
- low energy consumption linked to the small size and weight of the capsules,
- use of clean and affordable energies (electric motors) from different sources (renewable energies, local suppliers, shared networks such as “smart grids”, etc.) and aimed at reducing polluting discharges in the city,
- moderate price, accessible to all (a price of one euro per trip allows profitability in 10 years),
- perfect integration into the urban landscape; give the street back to pedestrians,
- etc.
The UrbanLoop project is the subject of a full-scale experiment on the campus of the Nancy-Brabois technopole where the demonstrator is installed. It will consist of a 300-meter-long loop including a station and allowing three capsules to circulate.
TELECOM Nancy participates in particular in the aspects of global simulator, capsule routing algorithm and turnout control system.
The school has actively contributed to the UrbanLoop project since September 2018 with:
- 2 industrial end-of-study projects (7 students):
- Simulation and Proof of Concept of a switch station of the UrbanLoop transport network: realization of a simulation of a switch station of this urban network that can take into account many study parameters (speed, flow, position relative capsules, type and position of sensors, etc.).
- Simulation of the urban transport network by UrbanLoop capsules: design and production of a discrete event simulator of this urban network that can take into account many study parameters (system capacity, probabilistic arrivals of users, network topology, distribution of load, etc.).
- 3 2nd year interdisciplinary research discovery projects (6 students):
- Software Defined Networking for UrbanLoop
- UrbanLoop small-scale prototype measurement and configuration campaign
- CPL communication prototype between a capsule and a switch station
- 4 “Assistant-Engineer” internships for 2nd year students
- UrbanLoop demonstrator: “intelligent” switch station instrumentation; Reliability of the speed control of the demonstrator capsules
- UrbanLoop simulator: Consolidation and extension of the simulator; Interfacing of the global network simulator with that of the switching stations
Find out more:
- Project website: http://urbanloop.univ-lorraine.fr/
- Project to follow on social networks: Facebook – LinkedIn
- France 3 Lorraine reports: