Since September 2024, HFC has been working together with several partners on a research project on micro electric mobility funded by the BMBF (now BMFTR). The project focuses on the topic of “mobi-lity in urban spaces,” where road space is a limited and therefore highly contested resource. Different groups of road users strive either to gain access to new areas - for example, by converting car lanes into bicycle lanes - or to preserve exclusivity on the areas they already use.

ADAPTIV pursues a novel approach aimed at enabling safe, efficient, and widely accepted interac-tions on shared traffic spaces. Within the project, this is demonstrated using the example of shared use of pedestrian areas.

The core idea is to support electrically powered bicycles (e-bikes, pedelecs) and light electric vehicles (LEVs) through environment sensing and targeted intervention in the vehicle’s drive system, guiding users toward safe, considerate, and socially accepted riding behavior. A particular challenge lies in implementing AI-based environment perception with very low energy consumption (<10 watts). This is to be achieved through the use of specialized embedded hardware as well as the careful selection of efficient algorithms.

One of HFC’s key responsibilities is the acquisition of training data for the AI algorithms. In addition, HFC will conduct the user studies within the project and serve as the consortium leader. The project is scheduled to run until summer 2027.