GOBOTiX’s Virtual Tramway – autonomous buses on virtual rails

“Where we’re going we don’t need rails – rather we need Virtual Rails.” Dr Ben Davis, Founder

Virtual rails are like ordinary rails, they guide the vehicle which rides upon them, the only notable difference being they only reside in the virtual world, i.e the mind (mission planner) of the autonomous vehicle running on them. This makes virtual rails a fraction the price of an existing tramway to install due requiring very little extra physical infrastructure. In fact the only requirement for any infrastructure at all is simply to alert people and traffic to the fact that a virtual rail exists here and as such keep a vigilant eye, a bit of paint showing where the virtual rails are and you are ready to run.

The GOBOTiX vision of how robotics and autonomous vehicles can actually improve transport in a safe and reliable way is to be realised by the collaborative development of our Virtual Tramway concept. The plan is to deliver this using a relatively fixed path autonomous bus service. There will be modifications to infrastructure at junctions to aid the vehicle, much like a tram would require, but essentially the rest is just paint and highly resilient, high bandwidth, wireless communications. The project will be delivered through a  consortium of companies and institutions called “Concentricity”.

See full article http://travelspirit.io/news/boltonian-firm-take-on-leadership-role-in-shared-ecav-opportunity/