Press Releases

Lisbon, 18 December 2007 – Developed in partnership with the Pedro Nunes Institute and the University of Coimbra, with funding from the Vodafone Portugal Foundation, Project CyberMoving is designed to promote sustainable mobility in cities and will be demonstrated in Coimbra on 19 and 20 December.

The purpose of the demonstration is to present in situ the benefits that it could offer to students and workers in the area of Coimbra University and to people with limited mobility. The demonstration will take place on a circuit from Praça da República to the University.

CyberMoving is unusual for being totally computer controlled and supported by wireless GPRS communications technologies.

Designed to be totally safe even though not directly human controlled, CyberMoving obeys traffic signals, stops when it detects people or obstacles in the road, responds to users’ instructions, and when it is no longer needed, returns automatically to its point of departure.

Instead of being controlled from a central server, each vehicle is equipped with an independent processing unit, which provides an additional level of safety.

To use one of the vehicles, passengers simply need to wait for one to pass or summon it from a PDA or, more commonly, from a mobile phone using DTMF signals, which are available on almost all handsets.

The benefits of the system are obvious, not merely to users but also to the environment thanks to the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, reduced noise pollution and less traffic since they are shared vehicles powered by renewable energy.