7th SmartRaCon Scientific Seminar

The seventh SmartRaCon Scientific Seminar, SRC7SS for short, took place in Stuttgart on 15 and 16 October in the facilities of the DLR.

This conference series was originally launched by our partners CEIT from San Sebastian, the Université Gustave Eiffel from Villeneuve-d’Ascq and NSL (now GMV) from Nottingham as part of Shift2Rail in order to provide a platform for scientific publications. At the beginning of the Europe’s Rail programme, further scientific partners were added: In addition to SINTEF from Trondheim and RISE from Gothenburg, the University of Rome and the IBDIM Institute from Warsaw.

Over the two days, more than 50 participants listened to and discussed over twenty different presentations on topics such as communication, localisation, climate control, vehicle concepts and digital automatic coupling in the lecture hall of the DLR’s Institute of Vehicle Concepts or online. In addition to two key notes on the FP2-R2DATO and Academics4Rail projects, which were presented by the respective project managers, the programme director Nicolas Furio from Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking also presented the programme and, in particular, the new call from October 2025. Besides the Key Note FP2-R2DATO was represented by not less than six contributions, which made the project awarded as being the “most supportive Europe’s Rail project”. The respective award certificate was handed over to Cedric Gallais as coordinator and Bettina Doetsch as Flagship Program Manager.  The contribution by Paul Unterhuber from the DLR’s Institute on Communication and Navigation entitled “Test of IEEE802.15.4 for Train-to-Train Short Range Communication and Relative Localisation” was awarded the prize for best project paper. Michael Meyer zu Hörste (Cluster Lead “innovative Operational Solutions –  iOS)” and member of WP47 was acting as the chair of the program committee and conference chair. Concluding was the entire seventh SmartRaCon Scientific Seminar a full success for FP2-R2DATO.

The next SmartRaCon Scientific Seminar SRC8SS will take place in October 2026 in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France.