Skip to main content

Dutch municipality to deploy driverless shuttle on public roads

The municipality of Ooststellingwerf in the northern Netherlands is taking part in a three-month self-driving vehicle pilot project, which will see two shuttle vehicles travel from the Netherlands National Forest Service visitor centre to Wester Es in Appelscha, a distance of 1.55 miles. The driverless EZ10 shuttles, developed by Easymile, are autonomous electric vehicles without steering wheel or pedals; a ‘driver’ travels with the vehicle to stop it in the event of an emergency. The shuttles servic
July 7, 2016 Read time: 1 min
The municipality of Ooststellingwerf in the northern Netherlands is taking part in a three-month self-driving vehicle pilot project, which will see two shuttle vehicles travel from the Netherlands National Forest Service visitor centre to Wester Es in Appelscha, a distance of 1.55 miles.

The driverless EZ10 shuttles, developed by 8246 Easymile, are autonomous electric vehicles without steering wheel or pedals; a ‘driver’ travels with the vehicle to stop it in the event of an emergency.

The shuttles service run on virtual tracks that can be easily configured to accommodate sudden shifts in demand. It uses cameras, lasers and GPS to detect other vehicles and pedestrians and adjusts its trajectory and speed to avoid a collision.

For the pilot, the shuttle, which seats 10 people and it has a maximum speed of a little less than 10 miles per hour, will operate during daylight and under favourable conditions.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • US adopts automated enforcement… gradually
    March 4, 2014
    The US automated enforcement market is in rude health as the number of systems and applications continues to grow and broaden. Jason Barnes reports. Blessed and cursed – arguably, in equal measure – with a constitution which stresses the right to self-expression and determination, the US has had a harder journey than most to the more widespread use of automated traffic enforcement systems. In some cases, opposition to the concept has been extreme – including the murder of a roadside civil enforcement offici
  • Travel times halve for tolling converts
    August 5, 2013
    The Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver is a prime example of how the latest ITS systems enable new infrastructures to be built and paid for while still providing additional user benefits. Vancouver has 2.2 million inhabitants and, like so many major cities, is divided into two by a river, the Frazer river. This combination makes Vancouver the second most congested city in North America and the most congested in Canada. Through the middle of the city runs the Trans-Canadian Highway 1 which crosses the Frazer Riv
  • Cooperative road infrastructures - progress and the future
    February 1, 2012
    Robert Bertini, deputy administrator of the USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, discusses the research and deployment paths of cooperative road infrastructures. High-level analysis by the US's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the potential of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure/Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (V2I/I2V) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technologies indicates that V2V could in exclusivity address a large proportion of crashes involving unimpaired drivers. In fact,
  • Study forecasts growth of self-driving cars
    January 7, 2014
    In its latest study, “Emerging Technologies: Autonomous cars—not if, but when,”, IHS Automotive forecasts total worldwide sales of self-driving cars (SDC) will grow from nearly 230 thousand in 2025 to 11.8 million in 2035 – seven million SDCs with both driver control and autonomous control and 4.8 million that have only autonomous control. In all, there should be nearly 54 million self-driving cars in use globally by 2035. The study anticipates that nearly all of the vehicles in use are likely to be self