DRIVERLESS SHUTTLE ON TEST TRACK
Impressive demonstration of EZ-10 big step toward possible launch next spring
The EZ-10 shuttle gets on the move as part of a test of driverless vehicles in Colorado. Officials are hoping to use the shuttle for train passengers this coming spring.
Driverless vehicles are being tested in Colorado, and Monday a demonstration kicked off what the state hopes to be a new normal as early as next spring when train passengers can leave the 61st and Peña Station and step into an autonomous shuttle for a ride to the nearby office buildings or bus stop.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, Mayor Michael Hancock and others attended the kickoff ceremony Monday evening at the Regional Transportation District station. Hickenlooper proclaimed Dec. 4 as “Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Day.”
Such shuttles could one day become public transportation’s “last mile” between stations and office buildings to help get people to work and home. And driverless technology is considered much safer than humanpowered vehicles because autonomous cars don’t drive distracted or drunk.
The six-seat EZ-10 shuttle putted around Monday at about 5 miles per hour on a dedicated stretch of road connecting the rail station to the Technology and Operations Center of Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Co.
EZ-10 has no steering wheel, no driver and no seat belts. But it has cameras, radar and lidar systems to see and sense objects all around, said Lauren Isaac, the U.S. director of business initiatives for EasyMile, the French developer that opened its U.S. headquarters in Denver this year.
“This is the EZ-10, which we manufactured three years ago and incorporates EasyMile’s technology, both hardware and software,” Isaac said. “This enables the vehicle to know where it is at all times to an accuracy of five centimeters (about two inches). It knows where it is going and it is constantly looking around it for obstacles to know whether it needs to slow down or stop.”
Midway during the short route, which measured about one-fifth of a mile, the shuttle unexpectedly stopped. There were no people or cars in the way. But a stray tumbleweed had blown across the shuttle’s path. Guillaume Drieux, EasyMile’s global director of deployment, stepped out of the shuttle to clear the roadway.
“It has 12 to 15 sensors,” Drieux said. “But it’s not excessive because it needs to be reliable and safe. It needs to be redundant. There is a route the vehicle has to follow and a speed profile. Within the speed profile, the vehicle will adapt its speed to automatically do turns or stop. Different things will trigger acceleration or deceleration within the limits we set.”
Other driverless vehicles have added technology to drive around obstacles. But the EZ-10 is programmed to stick to a route so if, for example, a car stops and parks in
front of it, the shuttle is stuck. Drieux said if that happens, it will alert the supervisor that the route is blocked and must be controlled manually.
Autonomous vehicles are expected to one day dominate urban streets with most driverless cars operating as taxis at a very low cost — about 30 cents per mile compared with today’s $2 to $3 for taxi rides or 70 cents for those who own their cars, said Tasha Keeney, an analyst with Ark Invest, an investment management firm focused on disruptive innovation.
“Once you turn a taxi autonomous, it will become very cheap to a customer,” Keeney said, pointing to the economics of heavy use to keep costs down, plus electric vehicles that are less expensive to maintain. People with two cars at home today might have just one autonomous car in the future, while those with one car won’t have any because of convenient access to public transportation and low priced driverless taxis.
EZ-10 is meant to travel in regular road traffic but in Colorado, it’s not legal to do that yet on public roads. Hence the companies had to work with the Colorado Department of Transportation to close off a portion of North Panasonic Way just for the shuttle to travel.
After an accident involving a different self-driving shuttle company in Las Vegas last month — the shuttle from French startup Navya was grazed by a truck driver — EasyMile said federal regulators required it to have an operator inside EZ-10. On Monday, Christian Elmiger, an EasyMile deployment engineer, held a contraption to let him stop and start the shuttle manually.
EasyMile is working with CDOT, RTD, Panasonic and others to see if autonomous shuttles are a viable last-mile possibility to help get commuters to work or home on cold and blustery days, such as Monday.
“There’s an awful lot of work that has to be done between now and spring to summer before we can say this is an in-service route,” said Jarrett Wendt, Panasonic’s executive vice president of strategic innovations. “But make no mistake, this is the first time a mass-transit authority has leaned forward and said we’re not going to do just a pilot or demo, but connect a bus stop to a train stop.”
In Denver, Panasonic also is working with CDOT on a smart mobility network in which cars will talk to one another and road infrastructure to get alerts on accidents, speeds or other traffic information. The company demonstrated some early results Monday. The project, which is being tested on a 2-mile route near Panasonic, could start testing on Interstate 70 next year.