How would you like to take a ride on a driverless bus? (Sounds a bit futuristic, possibly dangerous if you ask me…)
If you answered yes you could now do so in Switzerland as part of a pilot project being tested in the city of Sion.
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), in partnership with the Mobility Lab Sion Valais began testing the electric driverless buses yesterday.
Two 11-passenger buses (they look like over-sized Smart cars) “will make their way through the historical district of Sion, the largest city in the Canton of Valais (located in southwestern Switzerland),” according to Curbed.
Rides will be free and will only be making a couple of stops during the journey.ย The buses will only go a top speed of 20 kilometers per hour which is about 12.5 mph.
I wondered how safe a driverless bus could be but the buses will be monitored and controlled by a remote operator. An attendant will also be onboard to “ensure safety and smooth operations“.
This project does sound pretty interesting and if successful I could see it being useful to get people from areas without public transportation to a nearby bus or train station.
Find out more about the Swiss driverless bus project from Curbed here.
Miles- In the future this probably will be the norm. I’m still waiting for flying cars! ๐
We may not need to wait too too long for those flying cars.
A recent article noted that several companies are working on them, and that the level of computer intelligence needed for a flying vehicle is much less than that needed for a self-driving car (with no slight meant to my pilot friends ๐
Initially this driverless bus may be used to get people from lightly-populated areas to a bus station, but I imagine that soon afterwards many and then all the buses will be driverless.
It seems to me that this whole driverless-vehicle thing is going to rock our world, which is why so many big players are pouring money into it.