Coast is a California-based self driving mobility company, providing AV solutions in low speed environments—campus, cities, airports, and suchlike. At the Autonomous Vehicles On Line Conference, Pierre Lefevre, Coast CTO, presented how they developed their mobility vehicle through a people centric approach, focusing on safety and passenger experience.
They provided transportation services for athletes (12 to 14) to and from the sports venues, during the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, organized in New Clark City, a new city under development located within the Clark Special Economic Zone in Tarlac province, Philippines.
COAST vehicles have mandatory built-in redundancies and is always able to stop safely. COAST vehicles analyze the environment to determine their speed and behavior, thereby providing optimum safety for passengers, pedestrians and other vehicles on the road.
Passenger experience is key, making travel as smooth as possible, with acceleration/deceleration at less than 1.5 m/s², keeping balance of standing passengers. It includes displays for passengers to remain informed about status and progression of the trip.
Low speed is a design choice, it is safer and more cost effective, and responds to the reality that the majority of trips in city centers and on private sites move at less than 30kmh. Each shuttle uses 7 different kinds of sensors, providing data to artificial intelligence machine learning and robotics software. Through sensor data fusion, the vehicle knows perfectly how it operates. Sensor redundancy is making the system safe enough to operate properly.
