Driverless 'bus of the future' is tested in Barcelona

Renault is investigating a caller driverless mini-bus successful Barcelona this week

BARCELONA, Spain -- Commuters successful downtown Barcelona person been capable to thrust the autobus for escaped this week. There’s conscionable 1 catch: this mini-bus has nary 1 astatine the wheel.

The autobus pulls distant from the halt with its passengers connected its own, brakes earlier changing lanes and eases down 1 of Barcelona’s astir fashionable boulevards.

Renault is investigating a caller driverless mini-bus successful Barcelona this week. The autonomous conveyance is moving connected a 2.2-km (1.3-mile) circular way with 4 stops successful the halfway of the Spanish city. Adventurous commuters tin leap connected escaped of charge.

The French carmaker has teamed up with WeRide, a institution specializing successful autonomous vehicles, to marque the prototype. It unveiled the driverless autobus astatine the French Open venue past year, but present it is investigating it connected the unfastened roadworthy successful Barcelona. It besides has investigating projects going successful Valence, France, and astatine the Zurich airport.

Pau Cugat was 1 of the funny to measurement aboard for a abbreviated thrust on Passeig de Gracia boulevard.

“We conscionable passed by a regular, combustion-engine metropolis bus, and I thought, ‘Look, determination is simply a autobus of the past, and close down it you person the autobus of the future,’” the 18-year-old pupil said.

Driverless taxis and buses are being tried retired by companies successful different cities, from San Francisco to Tokyo.

But Renault’s inaugural comes arsenic Europe mostly lags down the United States and China successful driverless conveyance technology, wherever companies are fiercely competing to get ahead.

“The US is doing a batch of experimentation with autonomous vehicles, the aforesaid happening successful China,” Patrick Vergelas, caput of Renault's autonomous mobility projects, told The Associated Press. “Until present we don’t person a batch successful information successful Europe. And this is wherefore we privation to amusement that this works and hole Europe to this way successful nationalist transportation.”

The electrical autobus tin tally for 120 kilometers without a recharge and scope 40 kilometers per hr (25 mph). It is equipped with 10 cameras and 8 lidars (sensor arrays) to assistance it navigate the streets filled with cars, motorbikes and pedestrians. The institution says the autobus is capable to thrust safely connected a fixed people done a engaged downtown similar that of bustling Barcelona.

Carlos Santos, of Renault’s autonomous driving group, said that helium has seen each types of reactions from riders.

“We’ve seen a batch of behaviors of people. Some of them were smiling, (while) different radical conscionable commencement crying, taking photographs oregon adjacent effort to unfastened the doors," Santos said earlier helium insisted that the autobus thrust was a harmless one.

Barcelona's metropolis officials said that they person had nary reports of accidents caused by the experimental bus.