Aside from self-driving cars being developed by companies such as Google, freight trucks are also joining the fray with the latest successful demonstration of an autonomous Daimler vehicle in an earlier HNGN report. Now, Europe is testing a mass transport system in Greece called CityMobil2, which are essentially driverless buses, ferrying passengers without polluting the environment.
Trinkala, a rural Greek town, was chosen for the pilot test of the CityMobil2 to determine the performance of the buses in real traffic conditions, ABC News reported.
Previously, the system has been tried in controlled campuses in Switzerland and Finland. Trikala will reportedly determine the efficacy of the CityMobil2, an EU-funded research project, especially because the town - as is the case of the rest of Greece - is hilly and typified by narrow and winding road networks.
The CityMobil2 bus is smaller than its conventional counterparts. It can accommodate up to 12 passengers and runs at a maximum of 20 kilometers per hour. It also looks like a cross between a golf cart and an ice cream truck. See it in the video below.
“I was saying…a bus without a driver, how could it be?,” an elderly passenger said in a Euro News report. “But I really enjoyed it and had no problem. It’s like a regular bus. I will use it, since it passes through my neighborhood.”
Each bus, which traverses a 2.4 kilometer route daily, is free, according to the Greek Reporter. The experiment, however, requires that the route must be free from parked vehicles and obstacles. In addition, each bus is controlled by a pilot in the control center, who is capable of overriding the system in case accidents or untoward incidents occur.
