The Rouen Normandy Autonomous Lab initiative, which consists of partners Métropole Rouen Normandie, Transdev Group, Groupe Renault and Matmut, is soon to begin testing its on-demand shared mobility service, which uses autonomous vehicles, on roads in Europe.
The service will be made available to the public in the final quarter of 2018 with four autonomous electric Renault Zoes and an i-Cristal autonomous urban shuttle jointly developed by Transdev and Lohr.
The Rouen Normandy Autonomous Lab service will provide extensive coverage in Rouen’s Technopôle du Madrillet business park in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray through connections to the Technopôle tram stop. Users can call a vehicle in real time from the smartphone app.
The vehicles will run on three routes covering a distance of 10km, with 17 stops across the district and a link to the Rouen public transportation system.
The four Zoes are currently being analyzed on roads and are equipped with autonomous systems developed by Transdev and Renault. The tests aim to cover all possible traffic scenarios with vehicles, intersections, rotaries and building exits.
The on-demand service will run until December 2019, and will provide an opportunity to fine-tune the technology and gain insight into usage and take-up among local residents to enable necessary adjustments.
