Self-Driving Bus is Now Operating in Australia

First self-driving bus is now serving customers in New South Wales, Australia. It is serving the Marian Grove Retirement Village in Toormina, a suburb of Coffs Harbour.

Using the BusBot app (iOS and Android), users will be able to hail the autonomous BusBot directly from their smartphone. Via’s advanced algorithms will enable multiple riders to seamlessly share the driverless vehicle. The powerful technology will direct passengers to a nearby virtual bus stop for pick up and drop off, and dynamically task the driverless vehicle to stops in real-time, allowing for quick and efficient shared trips without lengthy detours, or inconvenient fixed routes and schedules.

Via has been tapped by cities and transit authorities in the United States and around the world to help re-engineer public transit from a regulated system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic, on-demand network. Via now has more than 70 launched and pending deployments in more than 15 countries. Via most recently demonstrated its autonomous vehicle solutions at CES in 2019.

Many Others Are Working On Self-driving Buses

Chinese startups are also claiming to be operating self-driving buses. The Chinese self-driving buses have a safety driver in case some problem occurs.

There are also self-driving buses undergoing testing in Singapore.

SOURCES- Via, Youtube

26 thoughts on “Self-Driving Bus is Now Operating in Australia”

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  2. hey mate just wondering how much this bus is expected just wishing to find out you see my teacher wants to know how much for a project thanks mate

  3. I suspect things will not be free at all. Money will come from ownership through proprietary rights. Everything will be like perfume or drugs: cents to make and five hundred dollars to buy. Money goes to the copywriter holder already, not a productive person.

  4. Yes, everyone has their own conception of what’s considered vital or pork within the commons.

  5. Because there will no longer be fires to put out? (ok maybe you could privatize fire services)
    Because there will no longer be any crime and need for police, judges, jails?
    Because war will just go away?
    Because hurricanes and earthquakes and floods will no longer be a problem (well maybe in the orbiting space colonies or Mars colonies)

    Don’t get me wrong I would like a much smaller, Libertarian state and federal government but there is still a role for governement. It is really about what government does. Police yes, free wifi no.

  6. Think how much money will be saved when police/fire departments, social security administration, Nasa, ems, fda, fbi, cia, army, airforce, navy, fema, medicare, environmental protection agency etc are abolished.

  7. Not all emotions are bad: compassion etc. Some emotions are useful when interacting with humans, because human behavior is very strongly influenced by emotion, and it’s at the basis of forming bonds.

    The current work is only mimicking emotional responses, not actually feeling anything. As a recent example, there’s a catering robot that shows you a sad face if you don’t take any of the snacks it’s offering. That prompts some people to take a snack because they feel sorry for the robot.

    Another example is AIBO or a similar robot dog wagging its tail when it recognizes its user. Obviously it isn’t actually feeling anything, but the user interprets that as if the robot is happy to see them. They end up bonding with the robot more strongly.

  8. Please let’s NOT give robots emotion. Anger, aggression, territoriality, envy, hatred, jealousy, and on and on. These emotions are instincts that evolved in animals and worked for them. They passed them on to us, and what do they do for us? The Great Wars, just for starters. The greed that makes us destroy the earth. Total destruction. Let’s not insist that robots carry on our good works.

  9. True, there aren’t going to be many drivers on the road , but their job won’t be eliminated but changed rather, they will sit in control centers helping analyze special road conditions and sending the guidance to the vehicles that are predicted to be affected and taking control of vehicles that their automatic pilot behavior isn’t right according to signals sent by riders and analysis tools. The gain? Huge. Nobody needs to drive, for most people it is more economical to use autonomous riding service than to own a vehicle.

  10. I doubt government workers will be the first to be laid off.

    Just look at the Chinese self driving buses which still have a driver for safety reasons.

  11. Your questions answer themselves.
    If there are some things that still need people to make them, then there are still jobs.
    You can’t get to a situation where we need people to do work, but there is nothing to pay them because everything is free because it’s made by robots. The first half of the problem proves that the second half doesn’t exist yet.

    Which isn’t to say that we can’t reach a situation where person A doesn’t have a job, because they can’t (or won’t) do anything a robot can’t do better and cheaper, but person A still needs money to pay for something that person B won’t provide without payment.

    But that’s been a problem since forever.

  12. The general post scarcity assumptions appear somewhat plausible, a generalized AI could perform just about any task a human could perform via some mechanical construct. You would only need to finance the first generation of the hardware and software; once the public owns a copy of the gen1, they use that to generate copies of additional instances of gen1 and possible work on producing a gen2, depending how general the AI.

    Don’t get too excited, no general AI = no free stuff.

    One should expect the producers of gen1 will realize that their sales might be limited and would deploy their tech as a service or price it accordingly if for outright sale.

    Certain subcultures will not be willing to pool common resources to acquire expensive gen1 for the public good, such is the level of their hatred of free riders who don’t quite look like themselves.

  13. The assumption is that everything is free because everything is automated. Eventually, AIs (and robots controlled by them) will be able to do anything that a human can do. Maybe even creativity and emotion. There are already research prototypes mimicking both.

    Of course, it’ll take time, during which some stuff will be automated and some won’t. That’s the transition period, and it can have all sorts of effects on job availability, pay, and prices. The trouble is if at any point, people can’t afford to take care of their basic needs.

    When AI and automation do reach that level, I still think people will work. But instead of working where you can because you have to (to pay for food etc), it’d be work done more for personal fulfillment (and maybe to pay for luxuries), and only when and as much as people choose to.

  14. Except to make all the free stuff…
    Raises a few questions:
    1) Who makes the free stuff?
    2) If everything is free, no need for money, so where’s the incentive to work to make the free stuff? Some will do it for the greater good, but most won’t.
    3) So do we force people to work for nothing? Because that was tried before and it didn’t go so well – for the workers to start with, for their ‘owners’ later.
    4) If robots make the free stuff because nobody will work for free and slavery is a big no-no, who makes the robots?
    5) Even if robots make the robots, there’s still design, testing, supervision, maintenance, repairs, enhancements. Who does this – more robots? That’s an infinite loop waiting to happen.

    I still see jobs, even after your ‘transition period’. Just different jobs, probably a lot more skilled and a lot more sparse. But since everything is free that doesn’t matter. Until it matters.

  15. And the 35 thousand people killed annually by human drivers in the US alone? Do you just shrug your shoulders about them?

  16. Automating huge amounts of metal to move at deadly speeds is a terrible idea. This will end in tears and deaths, and the people who advocated for it will just shrug their shoulders.

    Any route that has autonomous driving needs to be cordoned off from people.

  17. If everything is free, there isn’t much need for jobs. The difficult part is the transition period.

  18. Naturally, buses and taxis are going to lead the road to autonomy because of the high price of the system and the ease of delivering autonomy in enclosed, highly mapped, monitored and understood areas.

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