AsianScientist (Aug. 19, 2013) – Don’t be surprised if you someday see a driverless vehicle shuttling between Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and JTC Corporation’s (JTC) CleanTech Park in Singapore.
In a partnership between NTU, JTC, and Induct Technologies, and supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), an autonomous electric shuttle named NAVIA will soon be tested along that two kilometer route.
As part of a two-year collaboration between the three organizations, NAVIA will also be tested and optimized at the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N). ERI@N and Induct will work to improve and enhance electric vehicle battery reliability and charging speeds, maximizing the efficiency of NAVIA, which already can carry eight passengers and at a maximum speed of 20.1 km/h.
The researchers hope that NAVIA and future autonomous vehicles will someday help to alleviate the ‘first mile, last mile’ transport problem faced by urban cities, which refer to the first and final legs of a journey where the typical bottlenecks in a transportation system occur.
Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar, Executive Director of ERI@N, said the NAVIA platform brings together two state-of-the-art concepts critical for future transportation in urban cities.
“Both concepts of a driverless transport and an efficient electric transport are at the forefront of research for personal transportation, last-mile transportation, and for logistics applications in leading automotive companies around the world,” he said.
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Source: NTU.
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