Skip to main content

Siemens launches Mobility IDEA contest

Siemens Road and City Mobility announced the launch of its Mobility IDEA (Improving Design and Engineering for All) contest, an initiative to find innovative ideas to help solve five of the toughest challenges facing the traffic industry. Contest winners will be invited to participate in a product prototyping workshop with Siemens technology experts. Siemens will also reward the top three universities by number of submissions with a traffic control software grant worth US$150,000 to help train future traffi
September 4, 2014 Read time: 2 mins

189 Siemens Road and City Mobility announced the launch of its Mobility IDEA (Improving Design and Engineering for All) contest, an initiative to find innovative ideas to help solve five of the toughest challenges facing the traffic industry. Contest winners will be invited to participate in a product prototyping workshop with Siemens technology experts. Siemens will also reward the top three universities by number of submissions with a traffic control software grant worth US$150,000 to help train future traffic engineers.

Using the IDEA contest website, powered by Mindjet’s SpigitEngage platform, members of the general public, including university students, will be asked to submit ideas for one of five scenarios that address a specific challenge faced by the traffic industry.

“According to recent statistics compiled by Nationwide Insurance, the average urban commuter is stuck in traffic an estimated 34 hours every year and we waste 1.9 billion gallons of fuel. The only way we’ll see a significant reduction in congestion and fuel consumption is to develop technologies that make our traffic systems more efficient,” said Ben Collar, head of US Research & Development for Siemens Road and City Mobility.

“Innovation is Siemens lifeblood, but we also understand that sometimes the best ideas don’t always happen inside our own walls. Technology is best cultivated when we can gather ideas from the bright minds of today and encourage the brilliant engineers of tomorrow to help improve our traffic systems with intelligent software.”

The contest will be open from 3 September to 16 November, with finalists announced on 12 December. Ideas can be submitted through the IDEA Contest website, where users can contribute new ideas, improve on current submissions by incorporating live feedback, comment and vote on other submissions, and use social media to share ideas. Once the contest has closed, submissions will be evaluated by a jury of traffic industry experts and winners will be notified directly. All submissions are eligible for top prizes.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • SESAMES 2014: What the winner said
    November 4, 2014
    The SESAMES Awards 2014 rewarded the best innovations in the world of secure payments, identification and mobility at a gala evening in the magnificent surroundings of the Salle Wagram in the heart of Paris. CARTES Daily News asked some of the winners for their reactions...
  • 2012 US Urban Mobility Report published
    February 8, 2013
    Researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) have come up with a way to measure the unreliability of trip times due to traffic congestion. The Planning Time Index (PTI) illustrates the amount of extra time needed to arrive on time for higher priority events, such as an airline departure, just-in-time shipments, medical appointments or especially important social commitments. If the PTI for a particular trip is 3.00, a traveller would allow sixty minutes for a trip that typically takes twenty
  • Siemens making complex tasks simple
    February 19, 2018
    Siemens' presence at Intertraffic Amsterdam always involves an array of technologies and systems across a broad range of traffic and transport disciplines and this year will be no exception. As the company points out, it is digitalisation that revolutionises traffic. A good example is the integration of the Internet of Things/Traffic (IoT) in urban infrastructure which is gaining traction and, in the future, it will be the digital presence that counts. Siemens is pioneering the ‘mobility revolution’ with
  • US infrastructure: once in a lifetime
    April 23, 2021
    Expectations are sky-high for Amtrak Joe and Mayor Pete as they use infrastructure spending to rebuild the US economy post-Covid – and ITS firms should be able to get a share...