Hong Kong Airport’s robobus offers glimpse of driverless future

Hong Kong International Airport says it’s ready to use driverless buses, confident it can shuttle passengers around the aerodrome from next year after extensive trials years in the making. By bolting on cameras, sensors and tracking devices, the Asian financial hub’s main airport has adapted and kitted out an electric bus from Chinese carmaker BYD Co. and been testing so-called Level 4 autonomous technology. The four-year effort, using other types of driverless vehicles without passengers, has racked up around 130,000 kilometers without an accident, according to the airport. “We can carry passengers to and from different destinations — totally driverless,” Chapman Fong, the airfield’s general manager, said. Reaching full levels of autonomous driving with flawless safety in a real world environment is the holy grail for automakers and tech firms alike. But despite the tens of billions of dollars spent, it remains illusive. While self-driving trucks are being used in some controlled applications, like hauling rocks around a mine site, cars without humans that can navigate streets shared by pedestrians, pets and other vehicles don’t exist. HKIA’s bus, a BYD J6 model, seats 14 passengers, features 10 cameras placed outside the vehicle from Uisee Technology (Beijing) Co. and uses GPS locators to track its position. A key part of the technology’s hardware is in a sizable, silver metal case next to where a driver would sit that contains the driverless unit and a back-up system that can independently scan the path ahead. If the main system fails, the back-up kicks in. “For the autonomous technology we are quite confident because we have been using it for live operations and have had zero accidents,” Fong said. Having actual passengers on board is another milestone and “we’re confident it’s the next move for autonomous vehicles at this airport.”<br/>