Smart Vehicles. A design contribution for the changing urban mobility

Digital technologies nowadays invade every dimension of human life, manifesting themselves both in space and in objects, transforming our habitat into an intelligent place (smart city) with intelligent products (internet of things). Albeit technological advances are progressing with remarkable speed, offering new scenarios for the future use of cities, globalization 3.0 and knowledge economy have led to a phenomenon of wealth concentration in large cities, on one side, and increasingly weak peripheries on the other, making urban mobility a theme of interest. Italy, despite having significant physical characteristics such as the territorial extension of the nation which logically reduce geographical distances between cities (compared to the great metropolises of the world), shows the symptoms of a few areas of prosperity surrounded by suburbs that struggle to keep the step. In this scenario, we are wondering how design research can contribute to the mobility of the future, in particular to the changing concepts of cars, and what new challenges are awaiting. Almost a hundred years ago, Le Corbusier wrote that “automobile has completely overturned all our ideas on urban planning”(1). Today, it seems that this condition has returned, the new mobility systems could redefine the urban space, as these objects might no longer be called automobiles. In this design research, in fact, the term automobile disappears in reason of its definition: "Four-wheeled motor vehicle with a generally petrol engine, used to transport a limited number of people on ordinary roads”(2). We can now intend as a matter of fact, that artificial intelligence in everyday things, vehicle automation, the evolution of machine learning and computer vision technologies will make vehicles lose their distinguishing elements: indicators for direction, light sources, the necessary four wheels and the position of the passengers sitting in two or more rows with their eyes facing forward. Hence, the aim of this paper is to present an applied research dedicated to experimentation on the morphological aspects of future vehicles for urban mobility intended as connecting elements between large infrastructure networks and, consequently, as a part of an integrated transport system that can help in bring the suburbs “closer” to the centers. Through the description of some micro-vehicle concepts, that try to completely overturn the common ideas of vehicles, the objective is to propose a design experiment that aims at identifying new forms of mobility that are inclusive and sustainable from an energetic, urban and social environmental point of view.