Michigan State University is expanding the route of its autonomous bus.
The new route spans five miles of campus and makes seven stops along the way, including at the Wharton Center, IM East, Anthony Hall and Commuter Lot #89.
Adam Lawver is the assistant vice president of facilities. He says traffic lights along the route are outfitted to communicate with the bus, which is also equipped with other sensors to monitor its surrounding environment.
“If we were to have a vehicle or a pedestrian or cyclist dart out in front, it’s able to identify that and stop immediately,” Lawver said. “Its ability to do that and see is far beyond what a human is able to do, so it’s a very safe experience.”
But a driver on board can take manual control of the bus if needed to navigate tricky or unexpected situations.
“We have various amounts of construction still happening on our campus,” Lawver said. “They will seamlessly have the bus driver push a button that will take it out of autonomous mode and be able to manually navigate through that construction site. And then when they get through and feel safe about the situation, they can hit a button and it goes right back into autonomous mode.”
The bus is a partnership between MSU and automated driving software company ADASTEC.
ADASTEC CEO Ali Peker say MSU’s campus is an ideal location to test the self-driving software due to the variety of circumstances, including construction zones, heavy car and pedestrian traffic and changing weather conditions.
“All these new things always happen here, then get exported elsewhere,” Peker said. “I think this is the beauty of having a living lab here, because you are able to prove yourself here and then export the technology to other places.”
He says they recently launched automated buses in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
“We passed through a lot of authority tests. And the thing is, without a safety record, you are not able to pass that,” Peker said. “Where did we create that safety record in all weather conditions? Here in Michigan, here on this campus.”
“So basically, whatever we do here always translates into growth, into sales, new bus models, better deployments for us.”
Michigan State University’s autonomous bus is fully electric and first launched in 2022 with a non-stop route between Commuter Lot #89 and the MSU Auditorium.
