The innovative UC Berkeley PATH team, funded 20 years ago by DARPA, has successfully tested its automated magnetic guidance system to speed up bus systems and the traffic around them.

A bus outfitted with this technology still has a driver on board who could assume full control at any time, and who decides when to accelerate or slow down. Otherwise the bus route is fully automated.

The technology would speed up traffic because the bus's movements would become predictable, like a train's.

This magnetic guidance system is made up of a simple two-part system: a series of magnetic markers embedded in the center of the lane, and sensors and processing units in the vehicle passing over them, that read and act on the information.

This very clever bus only takes a second to read and obey traffic condition inputs from the markers, even at 60 miles an hour. None of that indecisive dithering that's the hallmark of a human being behind the wheel.

As the bus travels, a bar underneath scans each magnetic field and feeds information to an on-board computer, telling the bus where to go and when to pull up at each stop.

Magnetic guidance would reduce the time needed to load and unload passengers at every stop, which makes the route almost as predictable as a subway system. Such precision would also enable roads to allow more lanes as each lane can be safely narrowed. The San Leandro test bus was able to land exactly on its marked target a centimeter from the curb.

The researchers behind the system have been studying magnetic guidance systems as a means of controlling vehicle movement for almost 20 years. They've also looked at how magnets might control groups of cars together so they might automate their movement on crowded highways.

Automating the bus system on the roads that we already have would cost only about $278 million for Berkeley, compared with billions for putting in comparable stretches of rail through this area.

Via Wired Autopia
Photo by Monica's dad