Office park testing autonomous shuttles
San Ramon workers may get lift from parking lot
As the boxy red shuttle glided at 12 mph around a parking lot at Bishop Ranch, a San Ramon business park, a crowd of onlookers discussed implications of the robot vehicle driving itself. “What would it do if a pedestrian steps in front of it?” someone wondered.
Habib Shamskhou, global practice leader from consulting firm Stantec, decided to demonstrate. “I have confidence in it,” he said, striding in front of the shuttle, which stopped abruptly, throwing a passenger to the floor.
Monday was the first day Bishop Ranch tested the self-driving shuttles on its 585-acre campus, home to some 30,000 workers. For now, those workers won’t get to ride the shuttles, which will initially operate in an empty parking lot with a few employees of Sunset Development Co., the park’s owner, as passengers. But if all goes well — and state regulators give an OK — within months, the self-driving shuttles will be ferrying workers from the far reaches of the parking lots to the front doors of their offices.
“It’s like when you get on that shuttle at the Disneyland parking lot,” said Alexander Mehran Sr., CEO of Sunset. He paid half a mil-
lion dollars for two electric EZ10 Shared Autonomous Vehicles from French company EasyMile, which will also help supervise tests over the next two years.
Mehran, who implemented human-driven shuttle buses for his properties decades ago, said he wants to help propel autonomous vehicles into widespread use as much as he wants to help his tenants navigate the 3 miles of roads on Bishop’s sprawling campus. Most of all, he hopes to engender public acceptance of robot cars, which most experts agree will replace human-driven ones sooner or later.
“On CNBC this morning, Jim Cramer said he’s never going to get in an autonomous vehicle because it frightens him,” Mehran said. “We’re trying to get that fear out of people’s minds.”
Randell Iwasaki, executive director of Contra Costa Transportation Authority, has been observing EasyMile’s shuttle tests at GoMentum Station, a private testing ground at the old Concord Naval Weapons Station. Those tests, which were not visible to the public, were Phase 1, he said. Phase 2 is starting now in Bishop Ranch’s parking lots, and Phase 3 will continue at Bishop Ranch once the shuttles can pick up workers and cross and drive on public streets. California legislators in the fall passed a bill to allow the shuttles to operate on public roads adjoining Bishop Ranch or GoMentum, but first they need to get a testing permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, something the operators said they are working on.
As required by state law, the shuttles will still have a safety driver aboard, who can manually operate them with a joystick-like controller. That driver, or any passenger, can hit any of three red “stop” buttons inside the shuttles to immediately halt them.
Self-driving shuttles can provide efficient transport between transit hubs and other destinations, Iwasaki said. “When we survey riders, the overwhelming need is for a first-mile, lastmile solution,” he said. “People say they’re getting old and can’t walk to the bus stop, or by the time they get to BART all the parking spaces are full and they have to drive to work.”
The shuttles have an array of sensors — cameras, radar and lidar, a form of light-reflecting laser — unobtrusively built in. Fleet management software will help monitor their comings and goings. Passengers can hit an SOS button to communicate with a remote person monitoring the people movers. For a passenger, the most striking feature is the lack of a driver’s seat or steering wheel. The interior looks like an airport people mover — except the vehicle doesn’t run on a train track but instead is programmed to drive along a preset route. The shuttles can hold 12 passengers (six seated, six standing) and have a wheelchair lift. They can operate about 14 hours a day and then need several hours of charging.
EasyMile, a 60-person company started three years ago, has about 40 such shuttles deployed in tests in 14 countries, said company spokeswoman Marion Lheritier. But Bishop Ranch is its first foray into North America. Other companies testing selfdriving shuttles in California include Auro Robotics, which runs converted golf carts around the campus of Santa Clara University.
In Paris, EasyMile’s robot buses take passengers about 200 yards over the Charles de Gaulle Bridge between the Gare de Lyon and Gare d’Austerlitz, driving in a dedicated lane. In Helsinki, the city Lheritier said is most advanced, they operate in mixed-traffic with human-operated vehicles. Other testing sites are in Australia, Dubai, Germany, Japan and Singapore. EasyMile expects to build 80 more shuttles this year with its partner, French carmaker Ligier.
All the worldwide tests still have drivers aboard, but they rarely if ever take control. Instead, their main job is to answer people’s questions. The dumbest one? “Someone in Paris asked if he could attach his bike to the back to have the shuttle tow him,” Lheritier said.