Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI

In 2021, around 22,000 children between the ages of six and 15 were injured in road traffic accidents. For several years, Fraunhofer IVI has been working to change these accident statistics for the better. The focus is particularly on ten- to 15-year-olds – they are "the forgotten age group" in road safety education. To improve road safety among children and adolescents and make them aware of the associated daily dangers, researchers at the institute developed the Fraunhofer IVI Accident Prevention School (FAPS). FAPS is a prevention course specifically aimed at young people, which is intended to provoke sustainably effective "aha" experiences through real accident data from the children's school environment and the use of new technologies such as virtual reality.

The article "Out of the danger zone" in the new issue of Fraunhofer Magazine looks at the approaches in detail. In addition, traffic psychologist Nora Strauzenberg and accident researcher Dr. Christian T. Erbsmehl appeared as guests on the Fraunhofer podcast. In this episode, they explain the underlying idea how children can safely slip into the perspective of truck drivers, and how cooperation with schools can succeed.

• read the article in the Fraunhofer Magazine
• listen to the podcast (in German) »Verkehrserziehung mit VR: Perspektivwechsel im Straßenverkehr«
• learn more about traffic psychology and accident prevention on Fraunhofer IVI's website

»Future. Bringing it TOGETHER!« - this is the credo of the Saxon platform simul+: networking people to jointly develop visions and achieve added value for Saxon regions.

This was also the motto of the simul+ meeting on January 31, 2023 with regional network partners at Fraunhofer IVI. After initial words of welcome from the Saxon State Minister for Regional Development, Thomas Schmidt, Institute Director Prof. Dr. Matthias Klingner presented the Fraunhofer IVI and its research fields. The presentation also addressed the AMSEL and Telewerk projects, which are funded by the Saxon State Ministry for Regional Development (SMR) as part of the simul+InnovationHub.

Afterwards, the participants took the opportunity for an intensive exchange and discussed topics such as strengthening the innovation culture, new sources of value creation and future urban-rural cooperation.

To relieve urban traffic, delivery companies in particular are turning to the third dimension: transport using unmanned drones. The airspace above the required take-off and landing areas - so-called vertiports - must be monitored in a similar way to a major airport. The IDEALS research project - Intelligent Drone Coordination for Efficient Automated Air Logistics - is dedicated to coordinating such flight operations.

The routes of future transport networks are expected to pass through logistics centers equipped with vertiports for loading the air cargo from autonomous drones. In this context, the limited capacity of vertiports creates a bottleneck in the form of high drone density in their airspace. This requires automatic coordination for safe and efficient flights. As a preliminary study, the IDEALS research project investigates cooperative coordination in smart networks of multiple, heterogeneous, and autonomous transport drones for takeoff and landing operations at logistics center vertiports.

The IDEALS project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport (BMDV) as part of the mFUND innovation initiative with a total of 99,924 euros over a period of twelve months.

• to the press release (German)