GreenMove : a software infrastructure to support open vehicle sharing

Green Move is an innovative vehicle sharing system designed and proto- typed by Politecnico di Milano, with fundings by Regione Lombardia. The aim of the Green Move project is to solve the mobility problem dis- cussed in chapter 2, building a system which unifies and brings forward many existing solutions to this problem. Western countries have a common personal mobility model: vehicles are often owned and used by individuals, both for work and for personal travels. The core of the mobility problem is that, given the number of people in the world - who wish for a personal mobility model similar to the one described below - the ending of the reservoirs of fossile combustibles and the extreme need to reduce the CO2 emissions in the next twenty years, people won’t be able to perpetrate or reach the aforementioned model of mobility. Vehicle sharing allows people to limit the possession of an own vehicle, while preserving their ability to move without using only the public trans- portation system. Chapter 2 presents multiple vehicle sharing initiatives which exist in the world, stressing their characteristics and limitations w.r.t to the problem they wish to solve. The multi business-model of Green Move is described, along with another unique feature of this system, which is the multi ownership-model. Green Move does not infact require a single entity to possess all of the vehicles em- ployed in the car sharing system. This allows B2C, B2B and even P2P business models, with the only constraint of adhereing to a set of standardized proto- cols which are developed and enforced by Green Move itself. To comply with the requirement of reducing the CO2 emissions, Green Move chooses to employ only electric vehicles in its fleet. Chapter 3,4 and 5 focus on the overall architecture and core components of Green Move. A system with an ambitiuous goal such as solving the mo- bility problem requires an accurately developed infrastructure, both on the information technology (IT) and on the other sides. Chapter 3 focuses on the IT components needed to operate the Green Move vehicle sharing service. These include both the hardware and the software ones, ranging from vehicles to web application frameworks. Green Move does support multiple vehicle kinds, while the vast majority of existing vehicle sharing initiatives only feature one kind (e.g. only cars, only bikes). Each vehicle kind has to be adapted to comply with the Green Move stan- dards and protocols. This is achieved with the installation of a physical device on each vehicle, named the Green E-Box (GEB). GEB technology and design is described in chapter 3. A GEB is a physical device with electronic circuits developed at Politecnico di Milano and an Android board, which is a computer running the Android operating system and custom software developed for the GEB operations. The purpose of GEBs isn’t limited to allow vehicles to be shared in the GM system: they also collect data from the vehicles with its builtin sensors. The collected data are sent to a central repository and made available for use inside the GM system, both for the system itself and third parties which have a partnership with GM. This functionality is achieved with a custom software component named T-Rex. Chapter 3 describes this component and the functionalities it provides. The scope of T-Rex is not limited to data collection, it is infact a Com- plex Event Processing middle-ware capable of reacting to given situations de- tected with the observation of the stream of collected data, which are treated as events. Green Move aims to minimize the cost of operating a vehicle sharing sys- tem, and does this by automating everything possible and removing the need of any expensive structure which may be not needed or replaced with tech- nology. Users need to own a smart-phone to rent vehicles of the GM fleet, since the reservation process can be made online and on mobile and no physical keys are needed to access the vehicles. This allow GM to automatize the administrative functionalities of billing and to avoid having a pervasive human presence to operate the key delivery and return functions. The smart-phones run an application which enables them to connect to the GM system, place reservations and manage their billing preferences. Chapter 3 also presents the basic elements of a core component of Green Move, which is the Green Move Center (GMC) and is described accurately in chapter 4. GMC is composed of a web application, which acts as the website which users visit to browse offers and place reservations, and the T-Rex based com- munication system. The web application is a software component developed with the Ruby programming language, plus minor parts in other languages required for the website (JavaScript, CSS, HTML). The purpose of the GMC is to provide the functionality of users’ registra- tion, vehicle’s reservations and the administration of the whole GM system. GMC provides this functionalities both as a website and as web service, since it exposes a public application programming interface (API) which is used by the users’ smart-phone application to communicate with the GMC. Chapter 5 focuses on another important innovative functionality of Green Move, which is the possibility both for GM itself and its partners to push ad- ditional logic on the GEBs on demand. The cost of the software mantainance of the whole system is lowered since it has a mean of extending the code on 2the GEBs remotely. The extensions of functionalities on the GEBs are named Green Move Applications in a sort of analogy with the existing App based sys- tems (e.g. iOS, Android). Such a system has also a side benefit, since it allows some functionalities to be present and used only where needed, based on the context of the current user and vehicle. This is a unique feature for a vehicle sharing initiative. Chapter 6 describes some of the technologies and techniques used to aid the development of GM. Such a complex system requires many skills for its development, along with proper tools for testing and debugging of its components and the inter- actions between the latter. Chapter 7 presents the conclusions of this work along with the proposals for the future work on the GM project.

Green Move è un progetto del Politecnico di Milano iniziato nel 2010, fi- nanziato da Regione Lombardia. Lo scopo del progetto Green Move è quello di progettare e prototipare un sistema di condivisione di veicoli che risponda a tre requisiti, non contempo- raneamente presenti nelle soluzioni attualmente esistenti nel mondo: • I veicoli devono essere elettrici, o comunque a zero emissioni di CO2 • I veicoli devono essere di diverso tipo (quadricicli, motocicli, biciclette) per rispondere alle diverse esigenze degli utilizzatori • I veicoli non devono essere necessariamente dello stesso proprietario, in modo da consentire diversi modelli di business all’interno di un conteni- tore che possa raggiungere la massa critica necessaria al suo successo. Green Move propone e realizza una serie di standard interoperabili per ot- tenere gli scopi preposti. Diversi componenti del sistema sono già stati svilup- pati dall’inizio del progetto, a livello prototipale, e altre tecnologie già esistenti o finalizzate a progetti di ricerca del Politecnico di Milano sono state impie- gate nella costruzione del sistema. I veicoli del sistema Green Move sono dotati di un dispositivo apposita- mente studiato e realizzato, denominato Green E-Box, che permette di realiz- zare l’integrazione di diverse tipologie di veicoli con il sistema Green Move. Questa tesi descrive principalmente l’aspetto dell’infrastruttura software necessaria al funzionamento di un sistema così aperto e complesso come Green Move. I componenti presi in esame sono due: • il Green Move Center, che è il cuore informatico del sistema. Questo comprende un sito su cui gli utenti possono effettuare la registrazione e le prenotazioni, nonché gestire i propri dati e i pagamenti, e un sistema di comunicazione e raccolta dati ad eventi che permette a Green Move di sapere costantemente la posizione e i dati dei veicoli in circolazione. • le Green Move Applications, un sistema deputato all’estensione a run- time delle funzionalità software presenti sui dispositivi Green E-Box re- alizzato per mezzo di un modulo del Green Move Center e di un modulo delle Green E-Box.