by Gongaio Homem de Almeida Rodriguez Correia
Vehicle a u t o m a t i o n is developing rapidly, nevertheless a l o t of w o r k is still lacking, as w e are n o t y e t at a p o i n t w h e r e vehicles are able t o drive themselves on a road w i t h o u t a human behind t h e w h e e l . O n e of t h e possibili-ties o f a u t o m a t i o n is its use as public t r a n s p o r t . In t h e W E p o d s p r o j e c t , led b y T U D e l f t , w e are l o o k i n g at t h e technology b u t also on t h e o p e r a t i o n and passengers' acceptance of this w a y of travelling.
Veliicle automation is in fasliion. Many universities, car manufactures and even software companies are devel-oping tlieir own systems for making it possible for an automobile t o drive witliout any liuman control on tiie road, what we call full-automation, Notewortliy in tine recent years, are the cases of tlie google can one of the most visible in the media, and Tesla's model S, v/hich from one day t o the ne>ct has become partially au-tomated through a software update. Tesia, howeven is advising drivers t o keep their hands on the wheel "just in case" as they cannot promise t o -tal safety in lane changing and other automated taslcs that the car is now prepared t o do.This shows that tech-nology is indeed developing fast but it is not quite there yet.
Full automation has the potential, not only t o change the way we drive our cars, but also the way we travel in public transport networks, Public transport if properly planned and
operated, is indeed a more sustain-able way of moving big flows of trav-ellers in a city or region. Automation is already well-known in rail systems with examples as metro lines, or per-sonal rapid transit systems at airports. However with regard t o i^oad trans-port that's another stoi-y Only in the recent years research started t o ad-dress the possibility of providing fully autonomous buses on the road. The
Netherlands is a pioneer country in automated vehicles development and implementation:, the famous, still in operation, bus line of Rivium in Rot-terdam, was a brealcthrough at the time it was inaugurated (Figure I), Still, buses have to drive with a high level o f segregation from other road users, especially car traffic, and vehicles fol-low magnets on the road.
Figure I - Rivium automated buses in Rotterdam. Source: littps://versbeton.nl/20i5/07/de-zeifrij-dende-pari<shuttie-al-twintig-jaar-een-begrip-ln-rivium/
25 volume J ' T f 02 edition
Figure 3 - Riender Fiappe from 3f1E^TuDeltt and Jan Willem van der Wiel from Spring Source: WEpods
The great challenge for the future is making it possible t o have buses on the road that are completely autono-mous in the sense that they will not need special guidance and that they will be able t o interact with other vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles in a safe way Full-automation does not only fulfil! a technological wish. By cre-ating total driverless buses that are able t o drive in any segment of the road network, innumerous possibili-ties of accessibility that are not pos-sible today because of human driving constraints, are unleashed. In fact, the advantages go beyond the obvious savings on drivers' salaries because at-taching the vehicles t o schedules and personnel shifts hinders today many transport possibilities, such as for ex-ample providing accessibility to low density areas.
In order t o make this technology pos-sible there is the need t o do rigor-ous research on the systems t o be implemented in these future vehicles, but also in their operation and user acceptance.The WEpods project is a good example of such research that is being lead b y T U Delft and financed by the province of Gelderland, the Netherlands, Bart van Arem was chal-lenged by the province to initiate a pi-lot for connecting the station of Ede-Wageningen t o the campus of the Wageningen University For the re-gion, this project is about technology aiming t o match in the transportation system their cut of the edge research and practice in agricultural technology. ForTUDelft this has been a great
op-portunity for extending DAVl (Dutch Automated Vehicles Initiative) t o the public transport secton
A consortium has been formed where different partners with the necessary expertise have joined to provide the automated bus solution: T N O , Mapscape, Connel<t and Robot Care Systems. The consortium is led by Riender hHappee in 3ME and jan Willem van der Wiel from Spring in-novation management, commissioned byTU Delft (Figure 3),
W o r k is being done around the clock t o fully automate t w o pod vehicles which were bought from Easymile, a joint venture between a vehicle
man-ufacturen Ligier Group, and a high tech company specializing in services
ro-botics (Robosoft). In January the first trials should happen in the presence o f t h e Dutch minister of Infrastructure and Environment Mrs Melanie Schultz van FHaegen, where vehicles will be driving on a short road segment t o test the sensors and driving capability Safety will be systematically evaluated by assessment of the reliability of the sensors in detecting other road users. Safety will be ensured by redundant sensing and control loops, conserva-tive speeds and control strategies, and monitoring by a control room. A t the same time that the technol-ogy is being developed and installed, here at GiTG we are working on the next stages, assessing how the gen-eral public will accept and use such automated buses, A survey is being set up t o measure the attitudes of passengers towards riding in a driv-erless bus. Previous experiments that have been done with the same pur-pose are showing that the general population is not that well informed about automated driving and that they may be suspicious of the idea, especially regarding safety (accidents) and security (crime), WEpods is here t o research on those limitations and possibly eliminating them, opening the doors t o new public transport pos-sibilities that will bring a more social, environmental and economic sustain-able passenger mobility system,
volume 25 ? E edition 02 3)3>
Figure 2 - Route of tiie WEpods vehicles
' http://wepods.nl/ - http//davi.connekt.nl/
