Skip to main content

AVs for seniors from Via in New South Wales

Autonomous vehicle (AV) developers seem to targeting ‘closed’ communities such as retirement complexes or universities and Via is also joining this trend. The company has launched a free AV service called BusBot for a retirement community in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. In partnership with local bus operator Busways, Transport for NSW and EasyMile, BusBot is operating in the Marian Grove Retirement Village in Toormina, a suburb of Coffs Harbour. Via says its technology allows the vehicle
July 18, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

Autonomous vehicle (AV) developers seem to targeting ‘closed’ communities such as retirement complexes or universities and Via is also joining this trend.

The company has launched a free AV service called BusBot for a retirement community in New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

In partnership with local bus operator Busways, Transport for NSW and 8246 EasyMile, BusBot is operating in the Marian Grove Retirement Village in Toormina, a suburb of Coffs Harbour.

Via says its technology allows the vehicle to navigate to virtual bus stops, allowing passengers to share trips without lengthy detours.

Daniel Ramot, co-founder of Via, says AVs need to be shared by multiple people to reach their full potential.

“Via’s sophisticated systems are able to power, in real time, the movement of millions of connected autonomous shuttles and their passengers,” Ramot adds.

Each vehicle can carry up to 15 people and travel at around 10km/h. Users can access the service from the BusBot app.

Last month, Via launched an on-demand %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external shared transit system false https://www.itsinternational.com/categories/utc/news/via-offers-on-demand-shared-transit-for-massachusetts-seniors/ false false%> for people over the age of 60 in the City of Newton, Massachusetts.

UTC

Related Content

  • December 13, 2018
    Voi launches electric scooters in Lisbon
    Swedish company Voi has launched its electric scooters in Lisbon as part of a wider ambition to expand in Europe. In addition to Portugal, the company says it plans to bring its e-scooters to Italy and France over the coming months. Frederico Venâncio, general manager of Voi Portugal, says Voi riders in Sweden have travelled more than 450,000km in Stockholm, and the company expects to see similar growth in Portugal. “Although we want to expand rapidly, we want to do it in a sustainable way and in line
  • November 16, 2018
    OCTA launches on-demand microtransit service
    The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) has launched an on-demand microtransit programme to help better match public transit services with how commuters want to travel. The one-year pilot, called OC Flex, will allow riders to take an eight-person shuttle between two zones – one in Huntington Beach and the northern city of Westminster and the other in three cities: Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo and Laguna Niguel. Lisa Bartlett, OCTA chairwoman, says: "We hope that this innovative alternative will h
  • December 19, 2018
    Elon Musk unveils Los Angeles tunnel plan
    Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has opened the first tunnel in a planned network under Los Angeles to help ease congestion in the US city. The world’s media was invited this week to travel in the mile-long tunnel – built by Musk’s Boring Company under the Hawthorne district - in an electric Tesla vehicle. The trip was described as “almost a white knuckle ride” by the BBC: “A bumpy two-minute journey in a modified Model X through a concrete tunnel with a blue neon light in the ceiling.” A C
  • December 21, 2018
    AID teams up with Luminar for advanced LiDAR sensing technology
    AID-Autonomous Intelligent Driving, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi, is partnering with Luminar Technologies to deploy LiDAR products. Launched in March last year, AID has an autonomous vehicle (AV) test fleet in Munich and bills itself as the ‘centre of excellence’ for urban autonomous driving in the Volkswagen Group. Luminar LiDARs will be installed on the roof of the AVs to give a 360-degree field of view. “Perception remains a bottleneck today for autonomous mobility and we quickly worked to