The Taipei City Government, via cooperation with Turing Drive, will begin trial run of autonomous electric buses on a designated road in the city at midnight in May 2020.
The autonomous buses will run from 12:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. at 10-20km/hour during the trial on a bus-only lane.
Turing in 2019 applied with Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) for a one-year project to experiment technological innovations in unmanned vehicles, and obtained approval in February, the city government said.
Turing is the coordinator in the project, which also consists of ThinkTron, which is responsible for establishing high-resolution electronic maps; International Integrated Systems for connecting the trail run with the city's traffic lights information system; AIMobile for installing cameras at road intersections; Tron-e Technology for making the autonomous electric buses; and Trillion Green Energy for designing a control system for the vehicles.
In March and April will be preparation for the trail run, mainly readying two 6m-long autonomous electric buses and a 4m-long one, establishing high-resolution electronic maps and installing detection systems at intersections of roads, the city government noted.
The three autonomous electric buses will be in POC (proof of concept) experiment to test their response to various scenarios during May-August, with technical staff members on board but no passengers. Based on results of the POC experiment, POS (proof of service) trials with passengers will be conducted from September 2020 to February 2021.
A 4m-long autonomous electric bus that will be tested in Taipei
Photo: Taipei City Government
