Autonomous buses take to the busy streets of Helsinki

Posted on by

Make way for robot! Two driverless buses will be hitting the streets in Helsinki for some real-world testing for the next month or so, reports Finnish news outlet YLE
.

The EasyMile minibuses have previously been tested on public roads in Finland and elsewhere
, but this is the first time they’ll be mixing it up with everyday traffic there.

Finnish law, amazingly, doesn’t require a driver to have a vehicle — making it an ideal test bed for at least some kinds of self-driving technologies. These EZ10 buses are intended for short-range shuttling of people, for instance between a train station and bus stop will only travel at a jogging pace.

It may seem old hat to Valley-dwellers who see Google’s self-driving cars zooming around the streets of Mountain View, but different vehicles, with different purposes, in different countries, following different traffic rules may as well be a whole different industry.

I’ve asked EasyMile for more information on what specifically the company will be testing for, and will update this post when I hear back.

Featured Image: EasyMile