Overview
AVENUE aims to design and carry out full scale demonstrations of urban transport automation by deploying, for the first time worldwide, fleets of autonomous mini-buses in low to medium demand areas of 4 European demonstrator cities: Geneva, Lyon, Copenhagen and Luxembourg, and 3 replicator cities.
AVENUE revisits the offered public transportation services, starting from the original problem, which is to allow passengers to move from one place to another. It takes into account their special needs and time constrains, instead of trying to accommodate autonomous vehicles to the existing solutions of pre-scheduled bus itineraries.
In this context, AVENUE introduces disruptive public transportation paradigms led by SMEs on the basis of door2door services and the nascent concept of the ‘Mobility Cloud’ aiming in setting up a new model of public transportation. This model enables safe, efficient, on-demand and emission free personalised public transportation, available anytime and anywhere, blending conventional public transport with novel service models such these of the sharing economy.
The project partners will apply cutting edge technologies and I2V, V2I & V2V communications that will allow a twofold increase of the average vehicle speed and a tenfold increase in the range served by autonomous vehicles. A set of corresponding in- and out-of-vehicle services that substantially enhance road safety, the overall quality of the service and the value added to the passenger will be introduced, targeting also elderly people, people with disabilities and vulnerable users.
AVENUE draws and builds upon the accumulated experience from its consortium of 16 partners from 7 European countries, and the operation of Navya’s 65 mini-buses in 22 cities from 13 countries in 4 continents that already demonstrate reliable and safe operation at pilot sites by transporting over 180,000 passengers. The project activities are organised in 10 work packages that are implemented within 4 years.