Autonomous Transport Groningen
The province of Groningen sees autonomous transport as a means to maintain and improve accessibility and quality of life in the Northern Netherlands. This concerns transport by road, rail, water, and air.
In 2019, robotTUNER won the contract for 'Autonomous Transport Advisor' with a size of 12,000 hours. The assignment aimed to evaluate, improve, and certify existing PODs (vans for 6-8 people). These turned out not to be suitable for commercial public transport. robotTUNER advised the province of Groningen to automate public transport buses with an autopilot kit built in the CAVIDOR project. robotTUNER demonstrated a prototype of the autopilot kit in 2020 on a Renault Twizy, driving over 70 km/h without a human driver.
The Safety States Framework was built to accelerate the certification of autopilot software. In 2023, the UN Focus Group AI4AD presented a technical report with the Safety States Framework as an example of metrics for monitoring and assessing self-driving vehicles.
In 2024, robotTUNER aims to realise the following milestones in collaboration with public transporter Qbuzz:
- COLUMBUSS Innovation Lab
- COLUMBUSS Learning Community
- Safety Case Public Transport
- First pilot Level 3 for (macro) public transport bus on the public road
- Business case autonomous parking/ driving, washing, and charging on bus depots
- Business plan Shared Open Source
- First official driving test for a self-driving vehicle