Autopilot bus on the streets of Suzhou, not a trial run this time, people still ride for free

The nine-seat minibus, China Mobile’s 5G network plus, is equipped with safety officers, and these vehicles come from Light Boat Chihang, an autopilot company founded just last year.

Currently, Lightboat Zhihang’s RoboBus has two routes in Suzhou, Q1 and Q2, both of which operate in a 9.8 square kilometer area around the high-speed railway new town around Suzhou North Railway Station.

Although regular operations have begun, they are still completely free at the moment.

Unmanned bus

The newest member of the team, the former president of the United States of America, has been appointed as the president of the United States of America.

If you look closely, it’s not hard to spot the LIDAR supplier.

Autopilot bus on the streets of Suzhou, this time it’s not a trial run, people still ride for free
The RoboBus has a steering wheel and driver’s seat in the safety officer area inside the vehicle, unlike some automated minibuses in closed parks.

In addition the bus has a total of nine seats, and is equipped with ample armrests, just like a regular bus.

Also, there is a credit card/code scanning area on the right side of the door. The RoboBus is free to operate at the moment, and the staff at the site introduced that at present, users only need to scan the QR code to facilitate the company to make information statistics.

Gates are equipped between the safety officer area and the passenger area to ensure that the safety officer’s work is not disturbed.

Above the gate, in front of the passenger area, hangs a display screen.

The display shown to users in the car is divided into two parts, the main interface is driving status, showing the vehicles around the road, road speed limit, current speed, start/stop status; the right side is similar to the general public transport check-in interface.

For regular passengers who have participated in the current early bird program, just swipe the QR code at a set stop to get on the bus.

During the drive, like the RoboTaxi, the safety officer sits in the driver’s area with his hands in his lap, ready to take over the steering wheel.

The whole ride experience is similar to that of a regular bus, and also has an audio stop alert function. It runs at around 20-50km/h, which is close to the speed of a bus in the city.

However, due to concerns that the automatic door opening and closing of the bus may clip people, the door control is currently still performed by the safety officer.

Similar to many self-driving vehicles, the RoboBus strategy is relatively conservative and will ensure maximum driving safety, braking in the event of exceptional traffic conditions.

Waymo Background Team

In the last year or two, it is not unexpected news that automated driving has landed a trial run to serve users.

Baidu’s Apollo has started picking up and dropping off passengers in Changsha, Cangzhou and Beijing, AutoX’s RoboTaxi has also connected to Gaude Maps to start serving users, and Meituan’s automated delivery vehicle has gone live in Beijing’s Shougang Park.

But Light Boat Chihang is still one of the very efficient ones, which was only founded in March 2019 in Silicon Valley, USA, and has been carrying passengers to the ground for just 19 months now.

The RoboBus is not the same product as some of the unmanned minibuses currently on the market, but it operates directly on the open road rather than in a closed park, which is much faster.

The RoboBus solves the problem of the “last mile” of urban travel, which is not a commuter bus in the park, but a short-line bus, similar to the function of bicycle sharing, and solves the problem that bicycle sharing cannot bring children, luggage and inconvenience in rainy days.

The team of Lightboat Intelligence comes from Silicon Valley, and the founding technical team members all worked at Waymo before.

Business VP Jingshan Hao was an early team member of Shang Tang and Momenta. Hao Jingshan introduced, light boat has begun to try to commercial landing for public transportation companies.

In Suzhou, autopilot is running everywhere.

However, at Suzhou High Speed Rail New Town, in addition to Light Boat Smart, you can also see a huge number of self-driving vehicles.

For example, Momenta’s RoboTaxi.

Fairway Smart’s automatic sweepers.

Smart Plus Technology’s Autopilot Truck.

J6F’s smart driving sanitation vehicle.

In preparation for the second day of the China Mobile conference, the vehicles were lined up as if they were at an autopilot car show.

Suzhou High-speed Rail New Town has 64 companies related to the auto-driving industry chain and has gathered many auto-driving related technical talents.

There are even dedicated autopilot lanes on the city roads here.

A local autopilot company employee said that his company still felt empty when he moved here two years ago, but now, this new city is gradually flourishing, and the layout of the industrial chain has begun to bear fruit.

And an automated driving fleet administrator said, they also have algorithm colleagues living in Shanghai, close to the high-speed rail station, which facilitates the flow of talent, “but if you do not understand the algorithm may not be very good to find a job, after all, these automated driving company administrative logistics positions a carrot and a pit.”