Over the past ten years, research in "innovative mobility" field has been the subject of numerous works on Clermont-Ferrand site in the framework of a collaboration between Pascal Institute, LIMOS, Irstea Research Unit TSCF and Cerema Department/Laboratory of Clermont-Ferrand.

This work, funded both in the regional framework through CPER 2007-2013 (Innov @ Pôle project - Auvergne Region, State and ERDF) and national (ANR, PREDIT, CNRS, OSEO, FCE, FUI ...) or European (FP6 and 7),  provide today proven results validated experimentally and a set of operational demonstrators thus allowing to Clermont site to constitute an international reference. Some results have already been transferred to the industrial world (example EZ'10 autonomous shuttle project in connection with Ligier Automobiles).

Building on this seminal work, the Challenge 1 "Intelligent Vehicles and Machines" aims to develop new systems to increase the performance and operational safety of objects dedicated to the mobility of people, goods or machines. It is necessary to make the individuals, the environment and the technological objects interact more effectively in order to take the appropriate decisions for the optimization of the trajectories, the self-adaptation as well as the security and safety alarms management, respecting social, economic and environmental constraints. This must contribute to the development of intelligent and agile manufacturing and transportation systems. It is therefore a question of taking up the challenge of innovative mobility through reconfigurable mechanisms, machines and robots and their integration into three key mobility vectors:

• Smart vehicles: autonomous vehicles with high mobility;
• Intelligent machines: agile and reconfigurable manufacturing systems;
• Innovative materials for mobility.