The future in which we might find ourselves being driven around by computers pushes further into reality each day as companies around the world continue to deliver new and exciting solutions. One of the latest is brought to you by two companies, MUJI and Sensible 4. Their creation? Gacha.
Saying it outloud kind of feels like a tagline for a jump scare in a horror movie, but today that’s not the case. In this scenario, it’s more like they got (have) your back! Gacha is a new fully autonomous shuttle bus that can help get you to where you need to go, despite the weather conditions outside.
The two companies behind the new bus point out that Gacha features “superior” positioning, navigation and obstacle detection performance, which allow it to traverse the roads year-round, despite the weather conditions outside. They plan for it to be able to take you down a dry road on a sunny day, or a snowy road after a winter storm. All while safely getting you to your destination.
Gacha will be premiering on March 2019 in Helsinki where it will be viewable to the public. It will soon after begin its route on the road with normal traffic, shuttling passengers in three Finnish cities. They also plan to make Gacha available via MUJI stores, opening sometime in November of next year (in Helsinki).
MUJI is responsible for it’s visual design and user experience, giving it a modern yet futuristic feel. Sensible 4 is responsible for all of the technology that makes it possible for it to pull it all off without a physical driver. I couldn’t even begin to express how badly we want to try it out for ourselves (sadly Finland is a bit of a distance from here). For now, we will just have to wait till next year to see how the general public in Helsinki responds to it and experience it through their opinions.
As the world has been testing their autonomous vehicles in sunny/dry conditions, Sensible 4 seems to have been spending their time collecting all of their data in rough weather conditions, including snow and heavy rains. They are hoping to have a head start against the industry when it comes to these scenarios since most of today’s autonomous vehicles haven’t been stress tested much beyond perfect driving conditions.
The Gacha bus can hold a total of 16 passengers, 10 seated and 6 standing. It can travel up to 40 km/h, which means it isn’t going to be the fastest bus/shuttle on the road by any means, but it’s a start if it can pull off what it promises in bad weather. It’s an four-wheel drive vehicle, helping it get in and out of various terrain conditions and it can travel around 100+ km on a single charge (just over 62 miles). It supports fast charging as well as wireless charging, which is a bit interesting although they haven’t gone into detail on this just yet.
