City bus automation - bus trains, bus stop docking and depot processes

Research Project, 2017 – 2020

The objective is to develop automated driving of electrified buses with high traffic safety and capacity, low overall cost of society and energy consumption. By bus train operation, line capacity can be increased incrementally by adding buses in the train for a certain time or over a certain distance, with no extended time for intersections and stops. To safely keep a short gap between buses in varying traffic they are connected digitally and adapted to the traffic environment.

Short and safe stops are achieved through autonomous operation of buses and bus trains both longitudinally and laterally, enabling a time-efficient travel and reload of travelers and minimization of tire wear. In bus depots, the functionality can be utilized for autonomous (driverless) relocation of buses. The challenges are to define boundary conditions and functional safety requirements for varying levels of automation meeting varying traffic environments, develop, test and validate the technical concepts.