No-Operator autonomous shuttle – Herøya, Norway

The goal of this pilot was to implement an autonomous shuttle service with no operator on board for the first time in Northern Europe. The chosen site was Herøya Industrial Park, where the shuttle transported people from the main gate to the workshop at the end of the route. The route had three stops, one in each end of the route and one in the middle of the route at the cantine. There were two intersections on the route where the shuttle had the right of way. The shuttle ran for 14 days and operational hours were from 08.00 to 16.00. A shuttle supervisor was on site during operations and kept the shuttle in sight.

The pilot was opened on 30 October 2020 by the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg, who was also the first passenger on board the service.

The objective was to not have an operator on board and test shuttle functionalities with only a supervisor present near the track. This is a step towards the main goal of having an autonomous shuttle provide a transport service for cities and larger industrial parks. Taking the operator out of the shuttle is a big step forward because in the future it will be more cost effective, safer and environmentally friendly to have one operator running multiple shuttles from a remote control center.

The budget of this project was €50.000 EUR. It was financed by the Herøya Industrial Park, VY, Yara and Applied Autonomy.

The challenge was to get everything in place for a no-operator service, and we had to rent barriers along the route to increase safety. We had to put up signs that stated that the autonomous shuttle had the right of way, which also gave people in the area information that there was an unmanned vehicle on site. One of the intersections is very busy, with lorries, cars and pedestrians passing. At this industrial park there are about 2500 employees and a lot of traffic in and out. Due to covid-19 we had to limit the number of passengers to 4.

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

In the end this was a very positive experience, the shuttle ran without any issues. We had only positive feedback from passengers and other people working in the park. The total travelled distance was 117km and the passenger count was 165. The vehicle did not have any reliability issues. We didn't use the 5G network because the 4G connection had good enough data transfer for this pilot, but in future no-op shuttles, 5G network will be preferred when there are multiple shuttles connected that require monitoring at the same time.

Associated research: http://www.cityandlab.no https://www.sohjoabaltic-kongsberg.com/

Google maps: Link to the route at Herøya