Ericsson tests self-driving bus

Among the many new developments in urban transport at Kista Mobility Week were driverless, 5G-enabled buses shuttling passengers on public streets.

These, along with the other demonstrations, presentations, and discussions, highlighted the transformational opportunities which are now within reach at the event hosted by Ericsson, together with Nobina, the largest bus transport service provider in the Nordic region and the NGO Kista Science City.

Behind the scenes of the connected buses, the Ericsson Studio hosted a demonstration of the transport operation centre for its Mobility as a Service (MaaS) solutions. This showed that when you focus on the ultimate goal – meeting people’s mobility needs – solutions like automated transport dispatching and smart mobile ticketing solutions can really smooth the ride for modern commuters.

Most cities would like to increase the usage of public transport and the co-sharing of vehicles. The advantages include sustainability gains, better traffic flows, minimized commuter time, and lower societal costs from wasted time.

With the right data and insights about mobility needs across an entire city, this could make the public transport system people’s natural choice. And a good start would be not letting a warm bus run empty while people wait shivering at the stop.

The driverless buses are part of a demonstration of the future of transport, and the general public will be invited to climb aboard for a test ride and a glimpse of how the Networked Society can transform commuting. This project shows off what we refer to as the power of triple-helix – combining strengths from government, industries and academia – and it will be the first time that driverless buses have hit the streets of Sweden.

The technology is very cool, and it raises a lot of new opportunities for the way customer service is delivered. Imagine someone on the bus who can help with seating, trip planning, or even explaining local history, someone who could help keep the bus environment in great condition to ensure the most comfortable and pleasant ride.

The future will not only change the roles of drivers, but my hope is that all vehicles will also be more connected so that they can cooperate to become more responsive to the transport needs of commuters. What point is there to have vehicles only going back and forth if they are not optimized towards the mobility needs of the people? Maybe smaller buses can complement the bigger ones. And by connecting them all, maybe it will be possible to get them more synchronized so that you can go from A to B as smoothly as possible, even when you are using more than one transport mode.