Kamaz has shown a concept – a concept vehicle dedicated to the smart city transportation system, as a mobile part of this whole.
It is a minibus made as an autonomous variant – without a driver. The project is code-named “SHUTTLE” – “shuttle – carrying back and forth “, which is a term borrowed from the original English name “space shuttle” – space shuttle.
The main goal here is to introduce a number of 12-seat minibuses using autonomous driving technology in cities – on city streets.
The revealed concept has axles on the overhangs and centrally located double doors on both sides, opening sliding.
Such versions could be a promising alternative to traditional high-capacity buses – multi-passenger, driver-guided buses that travel along pre-determined routes.
Experts from Kamaz and the NAMI research institute are involved in the project.
As part of this combined team, they are working with Yandex, the company responsible for infrastructure.
For the time being, Kamaz, as an entity with the experience and capability to design vehicles with autonomous driving systems, is the primary industrial partner in this endeavor and is laying the groundwork in terms of marketing strategy in the area of bringing such products to market.
It has already officially presented a prototype robotic model (prototype robot vehicle), headed for a series of tests thereafter.
Besides, the project calls for tapping into the extensive experience in bus manufacturing that the Chelny-based giant has accumulated over its nearly five decades of operation.
In the SHUTTLE concept, the route taken by the autonomous vehicle is planned and given in real time adaptively, depending on the current passenger demand for transportation.
Passengers communicate with the system through a special application on their phone.
With it, the passenger specifies the starting and ending points – where he or she wants to go, with data on his or her current position being retrieved by the system based on the phone’s geo-location application.
In addition, at the time of ordering, the passenger can specify, depending on his needs and preferences, the functional role of the vehicle: whether it is to be a cab for personal travel or a collectively shared system – so-called “shared use.
collective (shared) use, in which the traveler gets around based on a vehicle also used by others.
There is currently no legal framework for the movement of such autonomous vehicles in Russia.
Nevertheless, the first step in their introduction could be analogous to the implementation of such varieties for operation in closed areas.
As a result, by 2018 the first autonomous buses built in accordance with this concept could appear in business parks, exhibition centers, science towns, innovation-industrial clusters, museum complexes and airports.
They can be used not only for transporting people, but also for transporting cargo in protective zones with required zero emissions, or in zones – places where it is not advisable for people to stay, as in chemical plants or refineries close to dangerous installations.
When discussing this system, it is worth pointing out:
- Individualization in relation to transportation needs – the so-called.
passenger transportation 4.0 with the traveler of the 4.0 era; - utility flexibility in operation;
- Reducing unnecessary driving – empty and underutilized mileage;
- Optimized adjustment of the supply of transportation services to the demand for them;
- Better use of resources – the vehicle pool and available infrastructure;
- Reducing time loss for travelers during transit;
- the departure from the assumption that freight supply is to exist ex post in relation to the previously reported demand for it – ex ante notification, which allows to better match time and cost of the supply and demand sides.
