Expect autonomous public bus in late 2020

This article is more than 12 months old

Apr 11, 2017 06:00 am

From October 2020, commuters will be able to ride on one of two autonomous public buses here. A new consortium led by ST Kinetics, which is building the autonomous battery-powered buses, expects to unveil a prototype by early next year.

The Singapore Autonomous Vehicles Consortium will also launch four driverless on-demand minibuses on Sentosa next year.

Some other countries, such as Japan and Switzerland, have started autonomous bus trials, but none with full-sized buses.

The buses will have Level 4 autonomy initially - they can drive by themselves but will still be manned. They will be engineered to navigate in rainfall of up to 30mm an hour, which means they might not be able to operate in a torrential storm.

The buses are best suited for trunk services with minimum turning and with bus lanes to enable better right of way.