AUTOSUP – Preparing the ground for AUTonomous Multimodal SUPply Chains

Elevating operational automation to support multimodal freight transport

AUTOSUP is a Research and Innovation Action (RIA) project funded under the Horizon Europe programme, aiming to develop multimodal automatic freight transport concepts and solutions to enhance the operation of hubs as nodes in a Physical Internet logistics network. AUTOSUP will closely work in two intermodal nodes (L-Hubs): Trieste and the port of Antwerp – Bruges.

This project, which commenced on 1 June 2024 and spans 36 months, brings together a multidisciplinary team of 17 partners. These partners include four key organisations actively engaging their ecosystems of Transport and Logistics stakeholders.

AUTOSUP focuses on several strategic objectives:

• Defining automation requirements: The project aims to establish the necessary automation requirements (needs, opportunities) to achieve seamless multimodal automatic freight transport, ensuring interoperability and efficiency across various transport modes.
• Empowering stakeholders with a Decision Support System: An open, data-driven Decision Support System (DSS) will aid L-Hubs in defining automated processes. This system will facilitate strategic decision-making, allowing for feasibility studies via simulation to assess new solutions’ efficiencies and impacts, considering sustainability, financial, and social dimensions.
• Supporting transition paths to automation: Two Living Hubs – Antwerp and Trieste ports – serve as focal points for demonstrating the link between major transport nodes and road corridors, rail, inland waterways, and airports. These hubs will cover six diverse use cases, providing real-world insights into automation transition.
• Designing new models for autonomous logistics: The project team will develop innovative operational, governance, and organisational change management models to incentivise cross-mode collaboration and reduce investment costs, fostering a cohesive and efficient autonomous logistics network.
• Validating solutions: Through feasibility analyses, impact assessments, and stakeholder engagement, the consortium partners will validate the operational and cost efficiencies of the proposed solutions, ensuring practical applicability and scalability.
• Establishing a strategic alliance: AUTOSUP will form a strategic alliance and thematic working group to align multimodal automation adoption roadmaps across rail, road, aviation, waterborne, and alternative transport modes. The project aims to lower automation adoption barriers through comprehensive transition guidelines, capacity-building sessions, and policy recommendations.

Our Role

ARS will be leading pilot activities within Trieste L-Hub, being in charge of the development of a high-fidelity Digital Twin (DT) model for the Trieste multimodal logistics hub which will be used to evaluate automation scenarios for rail, road, and port/sea.

The three Use Cases on which the project will focus on and that the DT will digitally represent are the following:

– the automation in rail wagon inspection and maintenance;

– automated multimodal last-mile route management;

– automated roll-on/roll-off transhipments