Helsinki, Finland

Innovation focus and new services

Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs) assisted operations.

Context and challenges

By 2035, the City of Helsinki aims to be carbon neutral. Low-emission deliveries are key to reach this goal. However, in the inner-city area, delivery vehicles often stop inconveniently, increasing congestion, emissions and safety risks, and are too big to circulate in the city’s narrow streets. Therefore, the city wants to turn to sustainable and adequate vehicles to reduce the impacts of last-mile logistics and find new solutions for data-driven planning and smart routing.

Objectives and ambitions

  • Reduce the number of routes by conventional urban delivery vehicles by testing and evaluating the impact of using automated delivery vehicles (ADVs).
  • Test the micro hub concept in the city of Helsinki with green last-mile delivery methods.
  • Move to long-term operations integrated with daily logistic flows, measuring cost-savings, and assessing the service in real life.
  • Test the operation with a range of goods and robot deliveries in the area.

 

Innovations

  • Safety and efficiency of remote supervision and operation of ADVs.
  • Complex delivery models (from the fixed route of the robot to on-demand and dynamic options).
  • Micro-hubs combined with last-mile deliveries carried out with ADVs, or other sustainable modes (ex. cargo-bikes).

Digital Twins will be adopted simulating last-mile delivery value chain reorganisation to measure the feasibility in challenging settings.

Partners involved 

  • City of Helsinki & Forum Virium Helsinki: pilot coordination, support and facilitation, dissemination, citizen engagement
  • LMAD: operation of autonomous platform
  • DB Schenker: parcel delivery services, testing of new scenarios and innovative use cases​
  • SOBEN (TwinswHeel): autonomous delivery vehicle designer and provider