Self-driving buses and automation

Volvo Buses, together with Västtrafik and Chalmers University of Technology, has investigated how passengers feel about travelling on a self-driving bus and how they believe autonomous solutions will affect future commuting. The study is the first to be conducted with a 12-metre bus for city traffic.

Exciting, safe and comfortable. This is how passengers describe commuting on a self-driving bus. Their feedback provides important insights into the transport system of the future. 

At Volvo Buses we're testing the driver support system of the future. In partnership with The Chalmers University of Technology, we've studied bus drivers reactions to an autonomous driver support system, find out what the study involved, how it was undertaken and the results we discovered.
 

As part of our study in partnership with The Chalmers University of Technology, we asked our drivers to explain how they felt about working alongside an autonomous driver support system, and what benefits they felt it brought them, including improved safety, passenger comfort and a better working environment.

In Singapore, Volvo Buses and Nanyang Technological University have been conducting a field trial with the world’s first full-size autonomous electric bus. The Volvo 7900 Electric bus is equipped with numerous sensors and navigation controls managed by a comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) system included in the Volvo Autonomous Research Platform. The project is a cooperative venture with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to develop and conduct autonomous vehicle bus trials for fixed-route and scheduled services.

Autonomous driving in depots will be one of the first commercially available applications of automation. Moving buses between washing, charging and parking can be handled with perfect precision virtually without human intervention. Volvo and transport operator Keolis demonstrated the possibilities at a real-life event in west Sweden, where a Volvo 7900 Electric automatically roamed the premises.

The Pedestrian and Cyclist Detection System continuously monitors the bus’s vicinity using a camera. When the system detects unprotected road users near the bus, it transmits a sound to warn other road users that the bus is approaching. At the same time, the driver is alerted via sound and light signals inside the vehicle. If there is an imminent risk of an incident, the bus’s horn is activated.

Volvo Dynamic Steering, VDS, is essentially an advanced form of power steering designed to improve the ease, comfort and precision of driving. But it is also an electro-mechanical component capable of steering the bus when fed with data from an autonomous driving system. VDS’s core components include an electric motor, a hydraulic steering gear, a control unit and a range of sensors.