Written By: Farah Vitale

Proterra will begin the first tests in the U.S. of auto driving technology for large transit vehicles in Reno. Proterra makes electric buses backed by Silicon Valley venture investors. They want to find out whether they can use this system, created by the University of Nevada, Reno, in public transportation. This system differs from the Bay Area road tests of self-driving cars by Google’s Waymo, GM, Tesla and Uber. With those tests, human drivers sit at the wheel, ready to take control if something is too challenging for the robot driver.

But with Proterra, the technology shadows the human driver.

A human will be in control of the bus at all times while the system will collects data from laser LiDAR, cameras and other sensors. It will be building up a simulation bank to use. They see a major potential for accident avoidance and improving driving safety. The first bus in the pilot program will run on a regular route in Reno for the next year. It will travel about 100 miles a day while it picks up and drops off passengers. Algorithims will be created as a sensor data is fed to a simulation engine. These algorythms will be used to handle standard road conditions such as plastic bags blowing in front of the bus, traffic cones, bicyclists and pedestrians.

An important reason they want to test in Reno is for snow and icy road conditions. Reno has all four seasons, harsh wind and rain, and extreme ice and snow at times. They want the buses to be made to endure crazy weather conditions in the safest way possible while also being realistic. Proterra may not ever remove the human driver as safety is the main goal.

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