“You need to be able to move everyone, whether they’re physically or mentally disabled, or they’re really young, or they’re a senior.”Īnd yet, Popple believes that electric, autonomous buses will become an integral part of urban life, eventually.
RENO DRIVING TEST ROUTES CODE
“Personally, I’m not comfortable yet with the idea that an ADA passenger could get on an autonomous vehicle, and that we could code for every possible disability,” Popple said. To comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the bus would also need to work with passengers using wheelchairs or walkers. Self-driving buses have other unique considerations.įor example, Popple notes that any automated bus would have to carefully monitor passengers entering and exiting the doors. “You can just throw a lidar on top of a car, and you’re good,” Kelley said. Figuring out the right places to mount it on a full-size bus, however, is a little trickier. One is being equipped with cameras and lidar, the laser version of lidar used in most self-driving cars. The Regional Transportation Commission already runs Proterra buses. Companies and researchers developing autonomous vehicles will be able to test their creations on streets and highways selected by the partnership. The Proterra project will be the first to take advantage of the Living Lab, a partnership of the university, the Washoe County Regional Transportation Commission, two state agencies and the cities of Reno, Sparks and Carson City. “You might not need that with freight, but passengers are the most precious cargo you can carry.” “You’re going to need a human being there to take care of the people,” Popple said. Robot school buses, for example, would probably need someone to supervise the students. He’s not convinced, however, that autonomous buses will ever go without some kind of human supervisor, even if that person doesn’t do the driving. Proterra CEO Ryan Popple says the idea has obvious appeal, as a way to improve safety and make public transit more reliable and efficient. And Tesla, whose massive battery Gigafactory lies east of Reno along Interstate 80, has also discussed creating an autonomous bus. Another French firm, Navya, tested robotic shuttles in Las Vegas in January. Proterra isn’t the only company eyeing this future.įrench company EasyMile, for example, is already testing autonomous shuttle buses in San Ramon’s Bishop Ranch office park. “For the live test, we want to make sure the vehicle can see before we give it the steering wheel.” “We’re taking a ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach for the downtown corridor, said Richard Kelley, chief engineer with the university’s Advanced Autonomous Systems Innovation Center. Eventually, one of those programs will be allowed to steer, under the watchful eye of a driver. In step two, engineers from the university and Proterra will use that data to see how different self-driving algorithms would perform if given control of the bus. Then the bus, driven by a human, will spend day after day plying a route along Reno’s Virginia Street, picking up passengers and gathering data on the pedestrians, traffic and streetscape. That work is already under way at a facility near the city’s airport. Step one involves outfitting a Proterra battery-powered bus with the sensors needed to scan the street. Proterra, the Burlingame electric bus company, has partnered with the University of Nevada, Reno to develop and test autonomous buses in the heart of Reno’s downtown. (Photo by Lance Iversen) Lance Iversen / San Francisco Chronicle 2017 Show More Show Less Technicians equip a bus with the sensors for self-driving test, which includes cameras, and radar Monday, May 01, 2017. Proterra, a Bay Area company that makes electric buses is doing a self-driving bus experiment jointly with researchers from the University of Nevada-Reno.
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(Photo by Lance Iversen) Lance Iversen/San Francisco Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of5 A string of Hi definition cameras will be installed on top of an electric bus in Reno Nevada.
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1 of5 L to R Bill Lauer master mechanic with Regional Transportation Commission, works with Kostas Alexis assistant professor at University of Nevada Reno and graduate student Shehryar Khattak (cq) installing a string of cameras on top of a battery powered bus.