Proterra launches first autonomous bus program in U.S.

Proterra announced it is initiating the industry's first autonomous bus program with the University of Nevada, Reno and its Living Lab Coalition partners that includes the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County (RTC); the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles; the Nevada Governor's Office for Economic Development; Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI; and the cities of Reno, Sparks, and Carson City, Nev.

This program represents Proterra and the partners' commitment to technology leadership and to establishing safer mobility solutions that will help build public confidence in the safety of eventual autonomous mass transit.

Unlike other programs to date, this autonomous vehicle pilot will deal with real road conditions from the perspective of public transit systems and emphasize the most challenging aspects related to mass transportation, which include dense and dynamic environments, degraded conditions, and a need for swift emergency response. The pilot will also explore a new set of robotic perception algorithms that are required to address these conditions and focus on tight cues from multimodal sensors and new multimodal localization and mapping. Rather than solely detect traffic, the Living Lab will focus on predicting traffic flows and plans to enhance safety. The university's current work focuses on the problems of vehicle perception, navigation control, path planning, and vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure research.

"In the pilot, we plan to research and develop a robust set of algorithms for localization and mapping, object detection in the domains of multimodal fusion and recognition of intent to ultimately advance robotic perception and move systems closer to our simultaneous goal of enhancing safety," said Carlos Cardillo, director of the Nevada Center for Applied Research at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The Living Lab program will include three main phases of research and development. Phase 1 focuses on data collection, vehicle instrumentation, and intelligent transportation system assessment; Phase 2 on data mining, communications, and algorithms development; and Phase 3 on licensing and commercialization. In the first phase, RTC's state-of-the-art electric bus, manufactured by Proterra, will operate on specific city routes to sense and gather data, which will inform technology and systems development. The pilot is supported by the Knowledge Fund, an innovative funding mechanism developed by the State of Nevada to spur research, knowledge-intensive and innovation-driven economic development, and Research & Innovation at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"As more and more communities take steps to integrate autonomous vehicles, we will continue to advance mobility solutions that best meet those evolving needs, while embracing the highest safety standards on the market," said Ryan Popple, CEO of Proterra. "We see the Living Lab pilot as a way to support ongoing safety improvements, encourage technology develop in autonomous vehicles, and better understand complex road dynamics."