Artificial intelligence is the future, though it may seem to be threatening job security for many like in this latest instance whereby china’s latest mode of public transportation is a bus, tram and train rolled into one and it just doesn’t end there. Here is what’s even more interesting: it won’t need a driver, it’s driverless bus-train hybrid that uses white lines painted on the road to navigate. It uses sensors to stay on the white line. The smart bus is much cheaper than building a rail track. This makes it ideal for cities that have growing demand for public transit, but not enough money to build subways.
Its maker, Chinese rail transit firm CRRC, is calling it a “smart bus,” but it’s a lot more than that. Like a train, it’s modular and carriages can be added on; but like a bus, it runs on the road.
Amazingly, the carriage will follow a preset path and won’t need a driver — but it won’t need tracks to be laid, either. The train is equipped with sensors that’ll allow it to follow white-dotted lines on the road.
It is like having a virtual rail for the bus.
The 30 metre long bus is able to fit 300 passengers across three carriages. More carriages can be added or removed if needed.
The smart bus, or Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART), is touted to be much cheaper than subway or tram systems, since it doesn’t require infrastructure to be laid down. This could prove to be the solution for many medium or small cities in China that can’t afford to build train lines.
It costs up to $102 million to build a kilometre of a subway track, as compared to about $2 million for a standard length ART bus.
A 6.5km ART line will be built in the Chinese city of Zhuzhou, with operations starting in 2018.
http://https://youtu.be/Dd3N9CFKe9M
