BRITE: bus rapid transit system

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A Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system or Sustainable Bus Transit (SBT) system (BRT-SBT in the following) is planned to be developed in the Quebec City area. The implementation of the BRT-SBT system is part of the long term sustainable mobility and transportation plan of Quebec City. The typical BRT-SBT system consists in trains of two bi-articulated vehicles of 24 metres each equipped by a guidance system. Such a BRT-SBT system will be exploited by Quebec City's RTC (Réseau de Transport de la Capitale). Similar BRT-SBT systems are planned or already in service elsewhere in the world.The project described in this proposal aims to demonstrate feasibility of the semi-autonomous guided vehicle component within the BRT-SBT transportation paradigm in real operating conditions and to define its architecture in terms of arrays of sensors to be used, control and driver-system interfaces. The research to be conducted by the academic team in cooperation with Thales Canada and Leddartech, the industrial partners in the project, aims at reaching the main objective of the project which consists in the collection of data and the design, implementation and test of a prototype for semi-autonomous guidance of a urban bus vehicle (single bus) in a realistic operating environment with respect to road and climatic conditions typically met in the Quebec City area. This first generation semi-autonomous prototype should meet the following requirements: the guided bus vehicle should offer levels of passenger safety and comfort similar to the ones experienced on tramways and should reduce energy consumption (be it fuel and/or electricity);the guidance system should adopt an open (''plug-in'') architecture with respect to its hardware components and software modules / interfaces, so as to enable its installation on a wide spectrum of vehicle models (fuel-, electric- of hybrid-powered).The research is comprised of three research thrusts: i) perception, ii) mechanical plug-in architecture for vehicle control and iii) system integration for semi-autonomous driving.