Volvo Buses has demonstrated the potential of autonomous buses in a depot.
The demonstration, held with bus operator, Keolis, took place at a bus depot near Gothenburg.
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The fully-electric 12 m autonomous bus drove itself between the parking bay and several workstations including cleaning, servicing and electric charging, before parking itself in the correct bay while carrying passengers.
“This marks a very important step in our autonomous journey as we now have successfully shown the commercial benefits an autonomous solution can deliver in a bus depot,” says Volvo Buses president, Håkan Agnevall.
“Autonomous buses in depots bring new benefits such as more efficient traffic flows, higher productivity, less damages and improved safety. The industry-common charging interface OppCharge is suited for autonomous charging, eliminating the need to connect power cables to the bus in the depot.
For his part, Keolis in Sweden CEO, Jan Kilström added: “The new mobility technology will be more common in five to ten years. Bringing the new technology into today’s depot business and developing it will not only speed up development, it will improve our performance, ensuring our passengers benefit over the coming years.”
ABB also participated in the demonstration.
The event was the latest in a number of demonstrations of autonomous buses carried out by Volvo Buses in recent years. It was one of the first to take place in a real bus depot – one of the areas Volvo Buses believes offers the greatest potential for automation.
“We are still many years away from seeing fully-autonomous buses on public roads, but since bus depots are confined areas with predictable and repetitive traffic flows, we see autonomous buses being used there much sooner,” added Agnevall.
“Working together with Keolis has given us this opportunity to test an autonomous bus in real conditions and will help us drive the development of autonomous solutions forward.”
