Autonomous vehicles to coexist in the streets

Both have previously been tested separately, but now they will try and coexist on the streets. During the spring of 2022, a delivery robot and a autonomous bus will be tested together at Chalmers Johanneberg campus in order to see how freight and passenger transport can interact in an urban environment. Eighteen partners are collaborating in this project that is financed by Vinnova through Drive Sweden.

In a not too distant future, more and more of our transports will be handled by autonomous vehicles. Especially the last bit of a transport or supply chain – when people have to get from public transport to their final destination or goods have to be transported from a transport hub to the end customer. These last-mile delvieries are often expensive and have a higher negative impact on the environment so there is much to be gained from streamlining these transports.

In recent years, the Drive Sweden projects Shared Shuttle Services (S3) and The Autopilot in Barkarby have tested autonomous, electric shuttle traffic and autonomous goods deliveries have been tested within the HUGO project. But what happens when several different autonomous modes of transport coexist in an urban environment? The project Collaborative Autonomous Transport (SAT) will investigate this, during a 1,5 year long test starting in January 2022.

Eighteen project partners – including universities, property owners, software and product developers and other actors within urban development – will jointly explore the issue with focus on areas such as vehicle technology, transport efficiency, user perspective, business models and urban development potential. Visitors to the Johanneberg campus become part of the project through more or less active interaction with the vehicles, when moving on the streets or taking the minibus from one side of the campus.

"Thanks to the broad collaboration, we will be able to take autonomous transport a big step forward towards real implementation. Our end-goal is to have a system solution with bus and robot and a preparatory analysis of how it can be implemented in new and existing districts", says Per Sunnergren at Johanneberg Science Park who coordinated the project.