The role of E-Bikes for the Recovery from Stroke – Whitepaper 9

New and innovative approaches are needed to overcome the barriers to engaging people in physical and leisure activity after stroke. Outdoor cycling, including the use of adapted or electric bicycles, may be one approach. However, perceptions of stroke survivors on this topic have not yet been explored.

To explore a sample of stroke survivors’ perspectives, who expressed an interest in cycling, about cycling and the use of electric bicycles, data was collected from 21 stroke survivors, seven of whom were current cyclists. 

Our Whitepaper, authored by the University of Central Lancashire, and in full support of the work of our community member, Disability Cycling Charity EMpowered people, concludes that outdoor cycling may be a worthwhile approach to increasing physical and leisure activity after stroke. However, barriers still exist and need to be addressed to provide inclusive opportunities for adapted and electric cycling for stroke survivors.

EMpowered people is a registered charity and a member of the TravelSpirit community. Their aim is to enable all adults with disabilities, from all backgrounds, to improve their health and wellbeing through cycling.

This Whitepaper is the outcome of an Industrial Call for Collaborative Research, initiated by TravelSpirit’s Electric Bike Research Executive (EBRE), via the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Infrastructure (NOCRI).

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Read more about the Electric Bike Research Executive (EBRE)  

An Open Future for Cities – Whitepaper 8

Preparing cities for the necessary transformation and organisational changes needed for an open future

In the midst of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, the UK’s TravelSpirit Foundation Executive team organised an Open Mobility Conference in Brussels, April 2019, to spearhead long overdue public and corporate policy developments for a new open paradigm for city transportation.

As a follow-up action to the conference, this white paper establishes TravelSpirit’s global position around openness in mobility, and the impact this could have on shaping the new mobility frontier.

In this paper, we place emphasis on drawing upon voices from diverse aspects of our city transport ecosystem, with the key purpose of encouraging further debate, and a call to action for building an open eco-system, open protocols and developing a global strategy for openness in cities.

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Read our online case studies on Open Mobility

Openness in Paying for Transport – TravelSpirit Whitepaper 7

Transport users have long sought to be able to buy transport in one purchase to cover all aspects of their end to end journey. Over the past 50 years there have been many attempts to offer users these services, but most have survived for only a short time or in restricted markets. Technology now offers many new possibilities for more widespread joint ticketing approaches. This paper reviews how opening up payment systems could overcome many of the most important barriers to enable seamless payment for transport across all modes of travel.

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Whitepaper 6: TSio Protocol: The Internet of Mobility

Integrated, seamless, secure and roaming mobility infrastructure for connected people and cars.

This Paper anticipates an emerging trend for integration of transport services, representing a $1 trillion per annum market concept called Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Rather than having to locate, book, and pay for each mode of transportation separately, MaaS will enable seamless planning, booking and itinerary management of door-to-door trips, wherever in the world you are.

It argues that services will remain constrained and delivered in silos, without a common rule set and governing framework. This framework will be implemented in a common machine-readable schema, with accompanying behavioural guidance, to govern interoperability between transport modes and across regional and international borders – the Internet of Mobility. It then proposes such a framework and advocates the development of TSio Protocol as a first step, by delivering seamless, secure and roaming global mobility account infrastructure for consumers and vehicles, using Blockchain & IoT technologies.

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Whitepaper 5: TravelSpirit Hackout Open Innovation Programme

Creating an environment of boundless creativity is highly challenging for large and hierarchical institutions. This poses a particular problem for governments, companies, and organisations that wish to support open innovation.

As one of our four core values, open innovation is central to everything we do at TravelSpirit. We established the TravelSpirit Hackout Open Innovation Programme to capture and magnify the value generated by our community projects and accelerate them for maximum impact.

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Whitepaper 4: Will everyone benefit from MaaS?

Earlier in the summer, we canvassed the opinion of 106 people on which parts of the UK would benefit most from MaaS, and which types of organisation were most likely to succeed in providing MaaS in the future.  These people who had a natural bias towards being already engaged in discussions on MaaS, and/or who were familiar with new technology as a whole. The short survey was designed to raise debate, and assess the opinion of the respondents,

Interestingly, they were quite evenly divided between the types of community would benefit most from MaaS, reflecting a diversity of opinions about what MaaS is and where it would improve transport options.

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Whitepaper 3: Autonomy: The role of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in Public Transportation and Urban Mobility for Cities

A range of autonomous vehicles (AVs), enabled by Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI), are necessary for the evolution of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) as a global resource.

This white paper sets out our initial position and frames the debate around developments in autonomous mobility and how it can shape the new mobility frontier. It identifies concerns about autonomous transport solutions being developed by technologists, without a broader public policy framework. We highlight the risks that this direction of business development poses and how technology-driven innovation may present a serious threat to the vitality of our society.

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Whitepaper 1: Open or Closed? The Case for Openness in Mobility as a Service

There are many elements involved in building the open Internet of Mobility. The MaaS ‘ecosystem’ requires contributions from road and rail at the core of public transport to the new disruptors in bike-share and on-demand taxis; to the platform providers which serve up travel options to individual travellers. And in between are various forms of data collection, provision and aggregation, along with the many components of back office payment systems.

In this context what we mean by ‘open’ is many layered. Open can be via the provision and use of open data or open source code. Or, via the growth of local eco-systems of providers who use these open tools to create new businesses and business models. Or through the sharing of data.

‘Closed’, on the other hand, creates proprietary systems which, often as not, will not work with other functionally similar systems within the same sector. Yet convergence is often desirable for efficiency.

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