Underpinned by models and theories about behaviour change, we have developed a series of innovative Apps for the Tourism, Transport and Logistics sectors that offer new ways for recalibrating the flow of people, transport and things. The prototypes and case studies offer what we like to call An Internet of Cars. Sixth Sense Transport is a collaboration led by the University of Southampton with University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art; University of Salford; Bournemouth University and the University of Lancaster.
Our research vision is to understand the extent to which behavioural change in transport habits and practices can be facilitated through the creation of a new form of ‘transport network’, based on extending social networking principles to transport users and their individual vehicles. Underpinned by relevant models and theories about behaviour change and assisted by technology, we will develop and encourage acceptance of an innovative, open, extensible technical platform called 6th Sense Transport (6ST), providing users from different time ‘typologies’ with new ways of understanding the relationships between their own future transport plans and those of others.
The novelty and adventure of the research lie in:
- exploring the interplay between society’s multiple temporalities and time scheduling (e.g. fluid’ vs ‘fixed’), users’ decision-making processes and technologies in the transport domain to enable the creation of entirely new forms of less carbon intensive transport behaviours;
- considering how already tagged personal vehicles can become part of the “internet of things” and create new knowledge and understanding;
- developing new and adapting existing leading edge data capture, mining and dissemination techniques developed in other projects (TOTUM, OURTRAVEL).
The project focuses on 3 main case studies, logistics, education and tourism. Under the logistics arm we worked on a project with Oxfam, more details here
Link to project website – http://www.sixthsensetransport.com/