Skip to main content

Popular Science Interviews

At ITRL, we know that research results are not always accessible to those who could benefit most from reading them. That is why we look for ways to disseminate as much knowledge as possible, to the widest audience possible, without overly complex terminology.

Cars driving at night

Interview with an ITRL researcher

The concept of our new series "Interview with an ITRL researcher" is simple; we interview a researcher, asking a range of questions designed to capture how their work contributes to society, the environment, industry, and general wellbeing, in order to give you an overview of their work. If it sounds like something you may be interested in, you can follow a link at the end of the interview and read their whole article.

Electrification on the road freight transport system

Zeinab Raoofi, PhD student at ITRL, recently presented her research titled “System-level Impact of Electrification on the Road Freight Transport System: A System Dynamics Modelling” at her Half-Time Seminar. She explored how the road freight transport system responds to emerging technologies and predict its future developments through morphological analysis by analysing the impact of electrification on road freight transport through a combination of system dynamics modelling and a multi-layer model. She further explored how charging infrastructure availability impacts the adoption of electric trucks, and how investments by the public and private sectors can shape a sustainable trajectory with the help of System Dynamics.

Electrification on the road freight transport system

Fault handling systems and self-driving trucks

Lina Rylander, Industrial PhD student from Scania, working at ITRL, recently defended her licentiate thesis titled“Designing for Change in Complex Systems: Design Considerations for Uptime in a Transportation System with Driverless Vehicles” where she explores how design methods can contribute to changing complex socio-technical systems, such as the transportation system, and what design considerations are needed to support uptime when manually driven trucks become driverless. We interviewed Lina to find out about her journey so far, key findings from her research and how she plans to continue further to achieve her PhD.

Fault handling systems and self-driving trucks

Resilience in transport

The effects of the pandemic have been both positive and negative with different effects for the actors within the logistics industry. How can we learn from how they adapted and reacted in order to use that in developing a resilient transport system? We've interviewed Louise Hård af Segerstad and Anna Steorn from Albaeco about the project Resilient E2E.

Resilience and the value of the bigger picture

Self-driving buses in public transport

MMiB became the first project in Europe that integrated self-driving buses in public transport. What are the effects caused by this? We asked Yusak Susilo, Mia Xiaoyun Zhao, and Jia Guo, three researchers behind the projects about their experiences and insights.

Integrating self-driving buses in Barkarby’s public transport

Self-driving vehicle diagnostics and remote support

The driver plays a key part in fault diagnostics today, either by relaying the information given by the vehicle via error messages or by simply using their human senses ("the vehicle is making weird noises"). But what will happen in autonomous trucks? How can this be communicated to the workshop or service personnel? These are some of the questions Erik Branzén and Jesper Englund aims to answer in their master theses.

Fault handling of self-driving vehicles with remote human support

The pandemic's effect on online shopping

A recent study from ITRL researcher Claudia Andruetto examines exactly how we have changed our shopping behavior during Covid-19, who needed to buy work-related items and who chose to stop shopping trips altogether? We sat down with Claudia to find out more about her paper.

Transition from physical to online shopping alternatives due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Sharable taxis

What if we could reduce the amount of shareable taxis simply by implementing better strategies for how they position themselves? Jesper Provoost is behind a project that aims to make shareable taxis more efficient while simultaneously allowing them to drive fewer kilometres.

Serving more passengers with less taxis

Digitalization

How will digitalization impact road freight transportation? It provides opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase service levels, but many uncertainties still remains. In this interview, Anna tells us more about the different futures we soon might find ourselves in.

How Will Digitalization Change Road Freight Transport?

CMaaS - part 2

In one of our previous editions of the Popular Science articles - On our framework to evaluate the deployment of CMaaS - we interviewed Bhavana & Mia about the Corporate Mobility as a Service (CMaaS). In one of Mia’s other publications, featured in this interview, Mia and her colleagues took a different angle on the CMaaS research project.

Key barriers in MaaS development and implementation

Transport in corona-times

Is transport behaviour during corona sustainable? Elisa explains about her work on the paper "The trade-off behaviours between virtual and physical activities during COVID-19 pandemic period". Read the popular science interview and watch the video she recorded to explain you more about the results of her research!

Is Transport Behaviour during COVID-19 Sustainable?

CMaaS

What if companies would start offering Mobility as a Service (MaaS) to their employees? In order to answer that question in the best possible way, Bhavana & Mia designed a framework that approaches the problem from a systematic point of view. They argue that only with this system approach we can fully assess the implications. Curious? Read more about it by clicking the link below! 

On our framework to evaluate the deployment of CMaas

Driverless bus

How do people perceive a trip on a driverless bus? Now that the automated bus service is becoming in an integrated part of the transport system, it is important to consider what the public thinks of it and how we could adjust it better to their needs. In this interview, Jia tells you more about what factors influence people’s perceptions and what we need to think of in the implementation of automated public transport.

How do people experience a driverless bus?

Driverless trucks

What does it cost to own & operate driverless trucks in the future? That is an important question to answer in order to transition successfully to this new sustainable form of transport. In his paper Albin presents a transparent calculation of cost savings and he is happy to tell you more about it!

What will it cost to own & operate driverless trucks in the future?

Co-working

Does co-working lead to energy savings? In this interview, Bhavana Vaddadi tells us more about her recent paper on the direct and indirect environmental effects of co-working.

Does Co-Working lead to Energy Savings?

Automated Vehicle tyr-out in Kista, Stockholm

Can understanding the needs and expectation of users help us design the automated vehicle public services of the future? Esther tells us more about her research on user needs based on an AV trial in Kista.

How Can User Needs be Met as we Introduce Automated Vehicle Services?

Smartwatches

Can new technologies like smartwatches help us learn which parts of a city are good or bad for our health? Or could they change the way we design cities, cars, and trucks? In this interview, Robin Palmberg tells us about his latest publication and the possible implications of his upcoming work.

What can a smartwatch tell us about a city?

Video clips

Is transport behaviour during COVID-19 sustainable?

How has COVID-19 changed people behaviour? What is the role of digital solutions in replacing physical activities? And will the new habits be retained by society after the crisis? The output of this study provides a better understanding of the role of digitalisation and its impact on the future of mobility, showing how such services can be improved to promote future sustainable mobility. The video is based on this preprint , that is also covered in a popular science interview .

Who is still travelling by public transport during COVID-19?

Can we use income, age or gender data to explain people's changed public transport ridership during COVID-19?

Combining smart card data (two million cards) together with socioeconomic data on more than 1,000 zones for Stockholm, ITRL PhD Student Erik Almlöf has together with Isak Jarlebring Rubensson, Matej Cebecauer and Erik Jenelius written and submitted a paper to European Transport Research Review. The main findings are that the decline in ridership is strongly predicted by income, age, workplace type and education. These findings give us a better understanding of how different social groups are affected, and provides us with better tools to proactively plan public transport, to cater for where there is demand during a crisis and where resources are more abundant. The paper has been published as a preprint . Enjoy watching!

Please note that there is also a Swedish version  available.