South Korea’s capital launched its first self-driving bus line on Friday. This is an experiment that aims to make the public more confident vis-à-vis driverless vehicles, like what has already been done in Switzerland.
The new bus on the road in Seoul does not look like an ordinary bus: it is completely symmetrical, with rounded edges and large windows that make it look more like a toy than a state-of-the-art form of transport.
A deliberately futuristic design
The design is intentional, according to Jeong Seong-gyun, head of autonomous driving for start-up 42 Dot (now owned by Hyundai), which created the bus’s self-driving technology. “It’s the future,” he says, adding that “a remarkable new type of design is needed as a result.”
The bus looks a bit “like a Lego” because it was made from composite parts to cut costs and make it easy to replicate, the engineer says.
“We want to foster the era of self-driving,” while noting that the company’s goal was to make the technology inexpensive, safer, and easily transferable to many different types of vehicles, like delivery trucks .
A driver keeps watch
For the moment placed under the close vigilance of a driver, the new bus will drive itself on a new route, a small circuit of 3.4 kilometers around the city center of the capital of South Korea, a duration of approximately 20 minutes.
People can board at one of two designated stops after reserving a free seat through an app. To get around, the bus uses camera and radar, rather than much more expensive sensors.
afp/oang