Skip to main content

Finnish university launches self-driving buses in Helsinki

Helsinki’s Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has begun a trial of self-driving buses on the streets of Helsinki as part of the SOHJOA-project coordinated by the university, which aims to provide opportunities for Finnish companies to develop new traffic automation products and services ideas. The two French-made EasyMile EZ10 buses have no steering wheel or pedals and run on virtual tracks that can be configured to accommodate sudden changes in demand. They can carry ten passengers and have a dri
August 18, 2016 Read time: 1 min
Helsinki’s Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has begun a trial of self-driving buses on the streets of Helsinki as part of the SOHJOA-project coordinated by the university, which aims to provide opportunities for Finnish companies to develop new traffic automation products and services ideas.

The two French-made 8246 EasyMile EZ10 buses have no steering wheel or pedals and run on virtual tracks that can be configured to accommodate sudden changes in demand. They can carry ten passengers and have a driver on board in case of emergency.

The buses will be trialled in Espoo in September and in Tampere in October until the first snow falls. The trials will continue in the spring of 2017.

Related Content

  • April 17, 2013
    Researchers test cost-effective vehicle automation
    Researchers at Oxford University in the UK are testing a combination of off-the-shelf technology which could enable a car to drive itself for sections of a familiar route. Dr Ingmar Posner of the University’s mobile robotics group is part of a team working on the car which he believes could affordably reach the showrooms in ten or fifteen years.
  • December 1, 2016
    Finnish light rail contract awarded
    Finnish organisations Pöyry, YIT and VR Track are to implement the Tampere light rail project on behalf of the City of Tampere for the implementation of the Tampere light rail project. The revised cost estimate for the implementation stage is US$2154.5 million (€238.8 million). The first phase of construction will commence in the first half of 2017 and is expected be complete by 2021. During this phase, the new rail line will be extended by 15 kilometres and a depot will be constructed in Hervanta. The
  • March 6, 2014
    Plug-and-play anti-collision technologies for everyone
    With an eye on the autonomous vehicle market, Soterea, a new high-tech firm in New Jersey, US, is developing plug-and-play anti-collision technologies that can make new and used vehicles safer, thereby helping to further evolve the critical element necessary to make driverless vehicles commercially viable. Soterea is the brainchild of two transportation technology experts, Eva Lerner-Lam and Alain L Kornhauser, each with more than four decades of experience in developing next generation technologies for
  • January 26, 2012
    Increasing road safety with automated driver assistance systems
    Jon Masters looks at how drivers will be trained to use the increasing number of advanced driver assistance systems being incorporated into modern cars