The highest energy costs of cities are focused on transportation systems and heating/refrigerating systems. The development of different technologies specially designed to optimise the energy consumption needs to deal with both type of systems to have a proper impact. Following this statement, a research group of the University of Alcalá has developed two main new technologies. On the one hand, a set of smart sensors have been created to optimise the use of transportation systems in urban environments. Among them we remark:
- Signalised roundabouts and intersections, adaptive to the current traffic status.
- Adaptive traffic monitoring and management.
- SmartCross: optimal traffic lights timing by pedestrian detection in pedestrian crossings.
- Prioritising public transport vehicles in roundabouts and intersections.
- Outdoor parking slots monitoring by a fleet of public transport vehicles applied to reduce the time needed to find a free parking slot.
On the other hand, thermal imaging technology is also available to identify homes and buildings that may need improvements in their isolation installations. A specially vehicle is equipped with infrared cameras, GPS and range-based sensors. It takes thermal images of homes in winter and summer months to automatically identify buildings showing poor isolation capabilities (heat and cool losses trough poorly isolated walls, windows and roofs). These images contain information about the global positioning of each one of the buildings analysed. Thus, digital and interactive maps can be provided to the user, including specific information about thermal isolation of each of the elements analysed by the system.
Innovative aspects
In the context of transportation, innovative aspects come from the use of new sensors that provide richer information than current sensor technologies, as well as the novelty of the proposed applications. On the other hand, the automatic creation of thermal efficiency digital maps has not been proposed up to now. These maps will be very useful for local authorities to improve the energy efficiency of their local communities.
Current stage of development of the research result:
Development phase
Funding Research:
National project
Competitive advantages
Competitive advantages by commercialising new systems focused on improving the energy efficiency, reducing emissions and ecological foot of cities. The main, but not unique, customers are local authorities of towns, cities and communities. This technology can be seen as an holistic system, or it can be offered in its different parts adapted to different needs.
Current state of industrial and intellectual property:
Patent applied
Type of collaboration sought:
-Technical cooperation
-Commercial agreement with technical assistance
Comments
The type of collaboration sought implies the steps needed to adapt the technology to the needs and activities of the company that assumes its commercialisation. Likewise, it implies further technical engineering maintenance.
Among the companies that may have potential interest in this technology we remark companies that are responsible of the urban traffic management systems, such as the following: SICE, ETRA, Ferrovial, INDRA, etc. In addition, this may be of special interest for energy distribution and generation companies as well as companies that provide different thermal isolation solutions, such as the next companies: ACS, Dragados, FCC, Endesa, Iberdrola, etc. Finally, medium companies with a high degree of innovation may be interested in commercialising the proposed technologies.
A development phase is still needed with a total cost between 150.000-250.000 €.
No comments:
Post a Comment