How an idea for traffic control could become a commercial reality
Congestion, accidents and emissions are some of the key issues that traffic researchers try to address. For years, Carlo Cenedese has been looking for ways to use smart algorithms to influence people in ways that mitigate these issues. His research started in his home country Italy, led him to his PhD in the Netherlands at the Universiteit Groningen, and now he works as a postdoc at the Institute of Automation (IFA) at ETH Zurich and is a member of the NCCR Automation.
“Already in the Netherlands, I got in touch with highway operators”, Carlo recalls. Unlike other mitigation methods, his approach did not require additional sensors to develop a digital twin of the traffic infrastructure. Such digital twins are otherwise frequently used to help simulate different scenarios and identify optimal solutions when there are infrastructure limitations. Despite their effectiveness, this made his research results easier to implement than others – often to the surprise of experienced transportation planners.
Addressing a real-world problem with the help of bench2biz
Michele Cucuzzella, also originally from Italy, was a Postdoc in the lab where Carlo worked towards his PhD. They started developing a common idea: technology, that could help to solve today’s congestion problems – especially in smaller cities that have a lot of traffic but lack urban traffic specialists among their civil engineers. Yet before they could continue to work on their idea, Michele moved on to the University of Pavia as Assistant Professor of Systems & Control. Their friendship and business idea, however, endured.
In the meantime, Carlo got in contact with local municipality officials in Italy. They struggled with the European Union’s demand to present strategic plans on how to solve traffic congestions, which would ideally also reduce noise and particle emissions.
As a member of the NCCR Automation, Carlo used the offer to apply for Bench2Biz – an annual workshop that a consortium of NCCRs offer as a tool to enable their researchers to start spin-offs and explore the commercial viability of their mostly fundamental research results. “This was the perfect opportunity for Michele and I to reconnect and to start to form a team that could take a look at this concrete challenge of the Italian municipality from another perspective”, Carlo says.
From scientists to potential entrepreneurs
“During the bench2biz workshops, it’s not about the science, but about the market potential, the intellectual property (IP) protection and the organizational planning”, Benjamin Sawicki, Knowledge and Technology Transfer officer of the NCCR Automation and co-organizer of this year’s workshop points out. Carlo and Michele had to fill out a form to identify if their idea fulfilled the requirements for deep-tech and to make sure that their idea had not already developed too far to still be considered in a pre-seed stage.
As part of the selection process, every team gets interviewed. “Carlo had difficulties to name in simple terms what his idea is about”, Benjamin remembers, and adds “but he got accepted and went through an impressive development within days. Carlo can pitch the problem and his business idea in less than 1 minute straight now.”
“Bench2biz actively looks for other scientists who join idea champions like Carlo to go through the various preparatory stages during the five workshops”, Benjamin says. Carlo’s team consisted of his business partner Michele, Lidia Alexa, a Marketing Professor, Marcel Greber, an industry expert from SBB, and his bench2biz coach with an MBA and experience in launching ventures.
From an idea to a plan
“The workshops were very entertaining. There were short lectures of at most 7 minutes by Mark Wilson, the founder of bench2biz, and his co-facilitator Christian Moser from the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property Protection. And then we split into our teams and worked on the question at hand. Time was never enough to finish, but we started developing an idea before getting together again, so that we could get the insights of where to look next», Carlo explains with a smile. Eliav Haskal from the University of Fribourg, who has been coaching teams for several years at bench2biz adds “the teams start with an idea and come out with a set of 20 PowerPoint slides. I realize it doesn’t sound very important, but frankly each slide asks a specific question that you have to think about. And this slide deck is introduced as a template and framework to structure your thoughts around your business idea.”
Bench2biz is not a competition – there is no winner. But Carlo gained insights, various different viewpoints, honest feedback within a safe environment and might have already developed a new idea for the next interesting project ahead. If you are also interested in deep-tech, coaching, ideation and entrepreneurship, participate in the next episode in 2022!
