The University of Michigan has announced that it will be launching two 15-passenger self-driving vehicles to transport students and faculty around campus. These two vehicles will be transporting riders between the North Campus and the Lurie Engineering Center. Now the university is only using two vehicles at this point, as this is a test, to see how well these self-driving vehicles will work. The University of Michigan already offers bus service for students and faculty around the campus in Ann Arbor, which is like a small city itself. So this will be another way for students to get around and get from class to class.
MCity which is the University of Michigan’s test lab for self-driving cars, is also on campus. This test facility is open to some other companies, like Ford and GM, to test their vehicles in a mock up city setting. It’s basically a fake city that has pedestrians walking, along with other cars and such, to simulate how these vehicles would work on the real streets. The MCity team is behind these new shuttles that are self-driving, and according to the university, it will be using cameras to see how passengers react to the shuttles, how passengers react when boarding the shuttles and so forth. To see how the experience can be improved. This is also going to help MCity determine what routes it needs to add, as well as the timing for these routes. Obviously during the day is going to be important, since that is when the majority of classes take place.
These self-driving shuttles could be the future of college campuses, airports and other places. Seeing as they will be cheaper in the long run, and obviously more efficient and safer. These self-driving shuttles are fairly small, since they are electric, there’s no gas tank which cuts down the size, and also no driver. You can find out more about these new self-driving cars that are going to be debuting at the University of Michigan in the coming weeks via the link below, or the YouTube video below which the University published.