The festival, which is happening on the 26th September, will demonstrate the latest autonomous forms of transport on roads, rails, water and even in the air!
By Thomas Ansell
For three years, the Northern Netherlands has been a ‘living lab’: the largest in Europe, and one of the only places in the world where different autonomous vehicles can be tested on roads, rails, on the water, or in the air.
@north festival is a celebration of these advances, showing off various projects and hoping to bring together ‘visionaries, financiers, inventors, developers, suppliers, government authorities, and transport organisations’.
Projects on show at the festival include an unmanned ship, an autonomous road shuttle connected by 5G and with 360 degree cameras, the worlds first ‘robo cab’ called the Navya; and various automated train simulators. Keeping up the high-tech theme, DEKC Maritime will also be showing the use of Virtual Reality in ship design.
All of these autonomous vehicles require cutting-edge communications between them, to make sure that nothing leaves its intended course, and to make sure that each vehicle knows where it and other vehicles are. This, then, requires incredibly quick data transfer, which will be shown at @north festival by 5Groningen, who develop and test practical 5G applications.
The festival will take place over the day of Thursday, 26th September, from around midday to 16:30 at the Expo Assen, next to the TT Circuit. Attendees include Arriva, ProRail (the Dutch authority for train tracks), Groningen Seaports; robotTUNER, and DroneHub GAE.
The Chair for the day will be Milou van Elburg, an innovation specialist, and the keynote speaker will be Vincent Everts, a gadget fanatic and trend watcher.
@north festival is free for visitors who sign up here, for more information, please visit the festival’s website