Imagry and Spanish bus manufacturer Unvi have integrated Imagry’s HD-mapless autonomous driving software into a Unvi-made battery-electric bus, with the first vehicle already en-route to a deployment site in Germany ahead of a planned Q3 launch. Israeli firm Ubsi is handling procurement, homologation and fleet operations as the integration partner between the two companies. The vehicle in question is a 10.3-metre, M3-category e-bus, pre-certified for European Whole Vehicle Type Approval under the bloc’s GSR2 safety regulation. Imagry and UNVI say the software integration itself took just shy of three months, which is well below typical industry timelines. Neither company has disclosed the bus’s battery specifications or range, nor have they detailed the exact German deployment location. It is also unknown whether the HD-mapless service will operate fully autonomous from launch or initially run with a safety driver present. With that said, previous autonomous bus launches—even those with more established technologies than Imagry’s—usually begin with a safety driver present, if for no reason other than reassuring riders. It is certainly noteworthy that the service will go live without HD mapping, because conventional engineering wisdom actually favours the opposite approach for this kind of vehicle. Fixed bus routes are predictable and repeated, and that is precisely what HD maps exploit best: centimetre-level curb geometry that enables docking precision for wheelchair ramps, a pre-built world model that frees onboard compute for tracking pedestrians and traffic instead, and a stored spatial reference that keeps working even when heavy rain or snow obscures lane markings from cameras. Because transit authorities only need to survey a fixed set of routes rather than an entire city, HD mapping is also comparatively cheap to maintain in this specific use case. Imagry’s mapless approach inverts that logic on several practical grounds that matter specifically to transit operators. Skipping the
Imagry, UNVI launch HD-mapless <b>autonomous</b> bus in Germany | <b>Automotive</b> World
Read the original article
automotiveworld.com →