First On-demand service in Europe

This project is the first of its kind in Europe. The goal was to deliver an autonomous on-demand service to the citizens of Trondheim. It was a complex route with 20 stations where the shuttle had to be ordered via a mobile phone application to arrive at the desired stop and take the passenger(s) to their destination. The route had to be dynamic to serve this purpose. Many locations in Trondheim were considered, but the project group decided that Øya was the best suggestion because it's an area which houses about 2000 residents, office buildings and many other services in a geographically small area. The project was organized as a research- and development project. The route opened on the 17th of August 2020 and ran for two months.

The objective of the project was to learn what an on-demand autonomous shuttle could provide to the logistics of a neighborhood. Since the pilot ran in a geographically small area, it was easier to understand what impact such a service would have and which benefits this new technology would bring to the locals. For Applied Autonomy, providing on-demand services and learning how to set up such an advanced route was a big step forward. In the future this will be a key learning for providing the first and last mile transportation to cities and suburbs.

The budget of this project was 120,000 €. It was financed by Trondheim Municipality, Miljøpakken, VY, AtB and Applied Autonomy.

We applied for a permit to use a self driving shuttle in the park. The Norwegian law for self-driving vehicles was used.

There were different challenges in this project. On the one hand, we encountered challenges common to many autonomous shuttle pilots such as potential issues with street parking, privately owned vegetation on the route and a slanted road edge. These challenges were solved by regulating the street parking in several places and limiting it to parking on one side of the road only where needed, informing residents about the issues caused by overhanging vegetation and asking them to make sure that hedges and trees were appropriately trimmed, and setting up safety elements where needed. On the other hand, the more complex route required a longer setup time and more thorough testing.

The Covid-19 pandemic also put some restrictions on the total number of passengers allowed in the shuttle at the same time. As such, shared trips could not be allowed, and a maximum of 3 passengers + operator could be transported on any one trip. The learnings from all of these challenges will help us provide smoother and more efficient on-demand transport in the future.

The results show that it was a positive experience. The shuttle drove 562 km in two months and carried 592 passengers, which is a good number when taking the pandemic into consideration. The shuttle had no issues during the operation. The consumer report showed that most of the passengers were very pleased with the service.

This pilot is associated with three studies: the national research project, SmartFeeder, led by Sintef and Jernbanedirektoratet, the Sohjoa Baltic Project, to which Applied Autonomy transfers knowledge to and City and Lab which is a research collaboration between the National Road Authority, Kongsberg Municipality and Applied Autonomy.

Google Maps: Trondheim on-demand route