Ongoing projects
The 5G-assisted Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (5G MASS) is focusing on the domain of assisted and autonomous shipping in the proximity of seaports. To this extent, the project will implement a set of functional blocks, shared between the ship and the port digital environments.
Thanks to the terrestrial 5G millimetre-wave network, it will be possible to aggregate real-time information shared between the shipboard and the port digital environments with the aim to maximize the positioning of the vessels in the port and to assist the pilot in the berthing operations.
Following the e-Navigation concept being standardized at IMO (International Maritime Organization), 5G MASS will contribute to enhanced navigational safety while simultaneously reducing the burden on the master, the pilot, and the ship crew. As the basic technology for such an innovative step is mostly available, the challenge stands in ensuring the availability of all information in real-time relying on the complementary capabilities provided by the satellite and terrestrial-5G networks.
5G networks will make new types of measurements possible by advanced antennas and by new positioning signals at higher frequencies, at both base stations and the user receivers higher speed, larger traffic capacity and ultra-low-latency (or signal delay) communications if compared to other solutions.
5G features will also be adopted for accurate video streams alignment (in terms of positioning, navigation and timing) sas captured from different cameras covering the port basin and that are used by Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality capabilities. These features are of paramount importance for the remotisation of the vessel control, especially in difficult operations like those of maneuvering and berthing in port waters.
New technology achievements will also be targeting the domain of Advanced Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) whose service aims to estimate the vessel positioning in ports as a merge of different position sources, fulfilling the IMO target requiring to reach a higher accuracy, integrating GNSS service and the localization capabilities provided by the IoT and the 5G network.
The 5G MASS system will be:
- partly deployed in a “MASS Piloting Unit” and run on portable and wearable devices which will be offered to the final users (notably active pilots) appointed to the ship control;
- partly deployed in a mirror implementation (called “Vessel Companion”) which will run in the control centres ashore.
An extensive testing campaign will be conducted in real world conditions in compliance with IMO MSC.1/Circ.1604 “Interim Guidelines for MASS trials” and keeping in the due consideration the preliminary results MSC.1/Circ.1638 “Outcome of the Regulatory Scoping Exercise for the use of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships” published in June 2021.
The trials will be conducted on a Ro-Ro ferry already in service at the Port of Livorno (Italy) under the supervision of the Italian Coast Guard.
The results obtained from the campaign will be shared with the Italian National Coast Guard Headquarters to contribute to the assessment of the standards in force and to steer the novel standardization activities at IMO and EU levels.
Start date: March 2022
Duration: 24 months
Partnership: TIM, CNIT, FlySight, Cetena, Grimaldi Group
ESA – ARTES contract: 4000137214
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5G SENSOR@SEA – The objective of 5G SENSOR@SEA is to design, deploy and evaluate a testbed enabling 5G technologies and services in the context of the maritime transport.
The core of the testbed is a NB-IoT framework on top of a hybrid terrestrial-satellite network, providing information coming from the maritime transport domain and port terminals (terrestrial domain) to a OneM2M IoT platform, making them available to build vertical maritime application services. In particular, we will focus on the cargoship container transport, due to the ongoing and disruptive growth of this market.
The testbed also includes part of network functions (especially related to satellite network) deployed in the cloud as virtualized functionalities, thereby fostering higher cost efficiency for network deployments. Cloud virtualization technology (used to deploy and orchestrate part of satellite network components) and Software Defined Networking capabilities (SDN, used to program the data flows) ensure, among others, achieving seamless integration of the satellite components in the upcoming 5G network systems. We refer to this testbed as a “5G technologies and service enabler” because its OneM2M IoT platform will be able to manage large amount of data produced by a massive IoT (mIoT) environment (operating in the maritime transport domain and in the terrestrial domain), which is a fundamental 5G paradigm as well as cloud virtualization and SDN.
For all these reasons, we named the proposed system 5G massive Machine Type Communication testbed (5G mMTC testbed). Based upon the 5G mMTC testbed, the 5G SENSOR@SEA activity will lead to the development of a prototype version of the 5G Global Tracking System (5GT System), proposed as final product. It enables a real time and remote monitoring of goods inside the cargo-ship containers, even during deep sea journeys.
The 5GT System design, requirements, integration and functionalities (both in terms of sub-modules and E2E system) will be verified through an accurate laboratory testing plan. Then, a field trial campaign will be conducted in order to evaluate the 5GT System performance in a real scenario, considering both maritime domain (i.e. containers carried by a cargo ship) and terrestrial domain (i.e. containers located in a port terminal).
Both the cargo ship and the port terminal will be provided by Messina Line, which is a stakeholder of 5G SENSOR@SEA.
Start date: January 2021
Duration: 24 months
Partnership: TIM, CNIT, MBI, Azcom, Sistematica
ESA – ARTES contract: 4000133644
iNGENIOUS (Next-GENeration IoT sOlutions for the Universal Supply chain) will exploit some of the most innovative and emerging technologies in line with the standardized trend (with a particular emphasis on 5G and the development of Edge and Cloud computing extensions for IoT in addition to providing smart networking and data management solutions with AI/ML), contributing to the Next-Generation IoT (NG-IoT) and proposing technical and business enablers to build a complete platform for supply chain management solutions. The project will bring to light a system-wide and global perspective that will pave the way for European parties to achieve a universal practical leadership capability. iNGENIOUS has therefore defined six use cases for converging the IoT solutions brought to the next Generation Internet (NGI) scope with the real needs that the next generation supply chain will require:
- The Automated robots with heterogeneous networks use case foresees the use of 5G-enabled multi-task automated robots in future smart factory production lines or warehouses, targeting the so-called tactile internet where sensors and actuators have to synchronously work with latencies of few milliseconds. The interoperability with wired Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) environments will also be addressed;
- The Improved driver’s safety with Mixed Reality (MR) and haptic solutions is a safety-centric use case that will enable to remotely control transportation of goods with Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) thanks to tactile internet, edge computing and immersive enablers (Mixed-Reality (MR) engines, haptic gloves) so that employees will be safe, away from hazardous working locations such as fuel port terminals;
- The Transportation platforms health monitoring use case will demonstrate that asset health tracking can lead to lower operational costs and higher asset availability with new data-based service provided by low-power edge distributed network and intelligent sensor modules installed in the transportation platforms;
- The Inter-modal visibility in the supply chain with containers use case aims to provide End-to-End (E2E) intermodal asset tracking with satellite connectivity for enabling enhanced real-time monitoring of shipping containers when they are sailing through oceans without connectivity to terrestrial IoT networks;
- The Situational understanding and predictive models in smart logistics scenarios will develop analytical and predictive models to estimate and optimize truck turnaround times for optimizing the access and reduce the wait for vehicles at the port accesses, leading to corresponding savings on direct costs for carriers;
- The Supply chain ecosystem integration use case will overcome the absence of a virtual interoperability IoT and DLT layer that will be capable of securely and semantically exchange the information flows between the different actors that can take part along the supply chain ecosystem.
Use Case 3, 5 and 6 are expected to be validated in the Port of Livorno during the lifetime of the project.
COREALIS – Capacity with a pOsitive enviRonmEntal and societAL footprInt: portS in the future era – proposes a strategic, innovative framework, supported by disruptive technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, next generation traffic management and emerging 5G networks (RTPORT), for cargo ports to handle upcoming and future capacity, traffic, efficiency and environmental challenges.
RTPORT, the 5G-based Model-Driven Real Time Module, will allow a better management of the general cargo (e.g. storage optimization, yard-vehicles call optimization, loading/unloading phases optimization, etc.), resulting in faster throughput compared to traditional human-driven communications.
A full reorganized mobile network (5G), connecting smart sensors with cloud resources, will be used in order to minimize information flow and data processing. RTPORT with 5G network is expected to decrease environmental impacts by optimizing yard vehicles movements in the port area as well as improving workers safety and enhance their skills with digital tools. The main goal is to improve operational efficiency, optimize yard capacity and streamline cargo flows without additional infrastructural costs.
The effectiveness of RTPORT will be assessed in the Port of Livorno Living Lab.
GRAMAS is an Interreg Italy-France EU project which involves five partners and has Livorno Port Authority as project leader. Other partners are Port of Savona and “IRES Toscana” for Italy, Ports Toulon-Provence and “Creocean Oceanographie” for France.
The aim of this project is to provide an Underwater monitoring system for the prediction and management of port silting.
This system will be composed of a set of under-water sensors (Bathymeter, motion sensors, water speed sensor, etc.) used to collect all the needed data to model the seabed and predict its changes. This information will be available through Moni.C.A. platform and will allow planned and specific interventions to keep seabed under control and permit easier and safer berthing operations for big vessels.
SE.D.RI.PORT project (SEdimenti, Dragaggi e RIschi PORTuali), in collaboration with Cagliari University, ISPRA, VAR Department, Toulon University, ARPAL, Province of Livorno and Corse Transportation Office proposes to introduce, in a cross-border context, a shared system for the constant monitoring of seabed silting, of weather and sea conditions and of the main chemical-physical parameters of the waters and sediments of the port areas and of the neighbouring coastal areas and to define common strategies for the restoration of the seabed.
Capitalising on the contribution of previous projects and referring to current regulations and compendia of good practices, one of the objectives of SE.D.RI.PORT is to draw up guidelines to be adopted jointly in the cross-border area to improve the management of port dredging and moving sediments.
In this context, CNIT will offer the silting monitoring system which is being deployed for GRAMAS project.
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SAURON stands for “Scalable multidimensionAl sitUation awaReness sOlution for protectiNg european ports” and its first aim is to create a Situation Awareness platform that can assist, improve, and accelerate the response of security personnel to threat or attacks performed against a critical infrastructure.
Nowadays coordinated and every time more complex terrorist attacks are shocking the world. Due to the progressive dependence of industrial sector and many critical infrastructures (CI) (e.g. EU ports) in ICT systems, the impact of a coordinated physical attack, a deliberate disruption of critical automation systems or even a combined scenario including both kind of attacks, could have disastrous consequences for the European Member States’ regions and social wellbeing in general. SAURON project proposes the holistic situation awareness concept as an integrated, scalable and yet installation-specific solution for protecting EU ports and its surroundings. The innovation concepts stands in the combination of the most advanced implementation of Physical and Cyber situation awareness layers, that feed the Hybrid situation awareness layer which is capable of determine the potential consequences of any threat and show the potential cascading effect of a detected threat in the two different domains (physical and cyber).
All these features and capabilities will be made available to security personnel through the use of new visualization techniques like immersive interfaces, cyber 3D models and other advanced user interfaces that will enhance and accelerate the responsiveness of port security department.
Livorno Port Authority is part of the SAURON Consortium as stakeholder, to study, validate, and analyse the benefits of SAURON Situation Awareness platform.
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Project H2020 ROBORDER aims at integrating ground-breaking technologies towards the delivery of a fully functional autonomous surveillance system of remotely controlled single or swarms of unmanned vehicles which will incorporate multimodal sensors as part of an interoperable network to detect, assess and respond to hazardous situations in border surveillance missions and tasks.
The complete network of sensors will include static networked sensors such as border surveillance radars. The static radar network will combine current and innovative photonics-based technologies assuring interoperability between the existing infrastructures and the new radars.
The Livorno Pilot Use Case will demonstrate how a photonics-based radar network can detect passive boats in a more efficient way then traditional radar. Moreover, the radar network data, with the integration of surveillance image from dedicated cameras and some unmanned vehicles, will help the port Monitoring and Control Platform and the ROBORDER System to make an early and effective identification of the unauthorized approach to the harbour entrance.
AUTOPILOT is one of the European Commission’s Large-Scale Pilots (LSPs) on the Internet of Things, specifically Pilot 5: autonomous vehicle in a connected environment. It is a H2020 Innovation Action promoting the use of IoT for enabling Automated Driving. More than 40 partners are involved with an overall budget of 20 M€.
Livorno is one of the six Pilot Sites (5 in EU + 1 in South Korea) where use cases and services are demonstrated in real traffic conditions.
The testbed consists of two zones: 1) The Livorno – Florence freeway (FI-PI-LI); 2) The Livorno Sea Port landside. The partners involved in the activities are: CNIT (Pilot Site Leader), AVR, CONTINENTAL, FCA-CRF, THALES, TIM.
The testbed specific features are:
(a) IoT devices are deployed in the car and along the roads in both the Highway and the Urban Area; (b) 7 JEEP Renegade prototype vehicles are used: (c) 2 connected and AD cars, 5 connected cars; (d) A connected bicycle prototype is also included in the loop; (e) The MONI.C.A.TM Port Monitoring Centre; (f) Traffic Control Centre with DATEX-II node are integrated into the Pilot Site ICT infrastructure.
Use cases: (a) Highway Pilot: road hazard events announced by IoT devices enable speed adaptation and lane change functions on the AD cars.(b) Urban driving: vulnerable road users are detected at traffic light intersection and trigger brakes on the AD cars. Many weeks of experimentation have been executed in real traffic situation; on top, stakeholder workshops and public on-the-field demos have been performed at the Livorno Sea Port Cruise Terminal, with invited talks from: Regione Toscana, AdSP-MTS, Municipalities of Rome, Turin, Verona, Italian ITS association. The purpose of those events was to feed the evaluation tasks that investigate how IoT could offer improvements to automated driving according to technical, business impact, quality of life, user acceptance.
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In the “connected vehicle” scenario, with the growth of interest on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) and the always increasing number of companies working on this field, security aspects and privacy concerns must be taken into account in the implementations. ETSI has developed a set of standards that define the so called ETSI ITS Trust Model which is based on a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and provide authentication, authorization, liability identification, message non-repuditation and confidentiality, privacy and anonymity of the connected vehicles. CNIT has developed a full proprietary solution that is conformant with ETSI standards (ETSI TS 102 940, ETSI TS 102 941, ETSI TS 103 097, IEEE 1609.2) and it was successfully tested in the last ITS Cooperative Mobility Service PLUGTESTS™ Event (ITS CMS EVENT 6th, 25 February – 1 March 2019, Sophia Antipolis (FR)). Together with the other proprietary On-Board Unit (OBU) and Road-Side Unit (RSU) products, this asset completes CNIT offer with respect to C-ITS solutions.
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The international freight transport between EU Member States is one of the three main pillars for a Single Europe Economic Area. URSA MAJOR Neo is a co-funded EU project addressing Cooperative ITS and automated, connected driving as well as dedicated actions in the scope of the TEN-T Core Network Corridors (road network along the RHINE-ALPINE and SCANDINAVIAN-MEDITERRANEAN CEF core network corridors, linking North-Sea-Ports, the Rhine and Ruhr area, metropolitan areas in southern Germany and in northern Italy and Mediterranean ports down to Sicily). Improving services for international freight traffic along the mentioned corridors is the main European added value of UMneo.
The ITS deployments covered by URSA MAJOR Neo address at least one of the following topics: enhanced truck parking services (smart parking); improved traffic and traveller information; bottlenecks removal; improved safety for freight transport. In particular, AdSP in collaboration with CNIT is deploying a C-ITS infrastructure enabling the services of bottleneck removal (real-time information and early notification about potential traffic congestion, accompanied by suggestion of alternative routes), safety information (real-time information about hazard detected ahead on the road) and smart truck parking (truck drivers are suggested to use smart parking premises for a time lapse optimised on the basis of the real-time traffic along the route and the operational status at the port of Livorno). In this way, an added value is provided to the logistics sector, enhancing safety and efficiency in the port businesses.
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Mobility 4.0 for Smart Cities (MOSAiC) is a project coordinated by ALSTOM FERROVIARIA SpA and co-funded by POR FESR Toscana 2014-2020. It started in March 2018 and its duration is 24 months.
The aim of MOSAiC is to develop new Mobility 4.0 solutions for mobility operators (concessionaires, public transport companies, etc.). These services are related to the dynamic and real time management of vehicular traffic flow, and they will adopt the most innovative concepts in terms of transport: Mobility as a Service (MaaS), Active Transportation and Demand Management (ATDM), Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), Smart Road, Connected and Autonomous Cars. Furthermore, MOSAiC will adopt the Industry 4.0 model (data collection and analysis, digital model creation, decision assistance, implementation) for the urban mobility management.
MOSAiC addresses the following aspects of integrated mobility: First, providing the road infrastructure with sensor devices able to detect Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) and vehicles, by applying the IoT technologies to the urban mobility, according to C-ITS standards. At the same time MOSAiC will experiment scenarios for making the cities able to react dynamically and in real time to emergency situations (caused by vehicles) and adverse weather events. Other benefits regard the possibility to inform citizens and vehicles (both connected and not connected cars) about changes regarding traffic and parking policies, and to offer integrated services for intermodal mobility of goods and people.
The issue of sustainable mobility regards passengers’ trips using different types of transport means in various urban and cross-border areas.
Due to adapting to users’ needs, info-mobility systems must propose multi-modal trips exploiting the whole public transport offered in a certain area. While implementing MaaS (Mobility as a Service), Info-mobility data play a crucial role in which users can purchase an integrated ticket via an application and can use it to obtain a complete transport offer. All the users’ data must be anonymized and processed according to the GDPR.
The mobility EU Project called “MOBIMART” (“MOBilità Intelligente Mare-Terra”, intelligent land and maritime mobility) belongs to the Interreg Italia-Francia Maritime 2014-2020 Program. It aims to consider the transport services as “trips” from origin to destination, independently from the transport mode and the morphological characteristics of the territories.
MOBIMART involves eleven Italian and French partners: Tuscany, Liguria, Sardinia Corse and Provence – Alpes – Côte d’Azur Regions; the Provinces of Livorno and Sassari; the Municipalities of Pisa and Genoa; the Sardinia and Livorno Port Network Authorities.
The project leads to realize a digital platform which will collect and integrate all the public transport dynamic and static data (both scheduled and real-time ones) coming from the project partners. A proper register will track all the events.
Currently CNIT is involved in the implementation of a service-oriented architecture (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) at the port of Livorno, which can manage mobility data coming from the port Monitoring and Control system (MoniC.A). In MOBIMART, CNIT will provide a high-level integration with the needed ICT component and the proper level of connectivity.
Finally, it is necessary that all the data which will be memorized and managed in standard for-mats (e.g. GTFS, GTFS-RT, EU-Transmodel-NeTEx) will be broadly available without restrictions, according to the “open data” paradigm.
MOBIMART project represents one of the theoretical use cases presented in the TM2.0 “Mobility as a Service” taskforce report and the “Guidelines for the development of MaaS services in Italy” (EN executive summary).
CNIT is collaborating with the Port Authority in extending the portal towards new services (especially for rail and Ro-Ro traffic) while guaranteeing its evolution towards the most interesting EU practices. Generally speaking, major maritime carriers are demanding improvements in the efficiency of port operations. Cargo carried by ships must be loaded and unloaded quickly with minimal stopover time in the port. This is driving the implementation of more efficient processes and the reorganization of technologies in the terminals: connected platforms, cloud-based services, service-oriented architectures (SOA), sensors and other IoT technologies (M2M), augmented reality (AR), autonomous transportation, next generation mobile networks (5G) and blockchain-based technology.
Vessel Operators are managing vessel operations in the deep sea by means of on-board and cloud-based technologies. When moving towards port waters the vessels end up into a jungle of un-harmonized local dependencies that are slowing down the process of letting vessels more autonomous.
CNIT is collaborating with the Port Authority in the development of enhanced services targeting to vessel personnel (notably captain, pilot, officers and the crew) in the domain of vessel traffic management and maneuvering in port waters.
By means of 5G technology it will be possible to connect the vessel to the port network infrastructure as early as possible so that the port can provide real-time information about wind and waves to allow the captain to properly implement the berthing maneuver. Detailed cartographic views and high-definition maps can be transmitted over-air to the incoming vessels.
On the other hand the line operator can inform the port authority about failures in the machinery and eventually it can request support to ashore to be assisted in the approaching maneuver. CNIT is following this activity from the perspective of Research and Development, standardization in the framework of ETSI institutional activities and in cooperation with the Italian Coast Guard.