Haneda airport tests driverless bus

Jeez such negativity.

That's because this appears to be just another vanity, show off effort aimed at a small small number of short term visitors for the Olympics, rather than a serious effort to spend the money to improve residents' lives.

Like cooling the streets in summer or cleaning Odaiba. Why not do it for us taxpayers who actually live here all the time?

Last time I was in a tarmac bus in Japan, it was narrow with high-backed seats and thus completely unsuited for the job.

The vehicle holds a maximum of 10 people

Yeah, that sounds worthwhile, only 20 or 30 trips needed per flight.

It's a nice thought until one hits a pedestrian

There shouldn't be many pedestrians wandering around the airside part of an airport, although this is Japan so maybe it wouldn't be that surprising.

I'm not against driver-less buses but a few questions. Why only 10 people?? How long will the bus take over each trip? The thing is, if the bus follows a preset path/route, i'm sure it will drive extra slowly since its a.i. and stop completely at every turn, while a human bus driver can usually somewhat anticipate what happen in traffic and thus speed things up. Again, not being negative but I don't see any merits here at the moment.

Jeez such negativity. This is a no brainer as the bus would travel along controlled and predictable routes with no variable traffic conditions and would save a huge amount of human effort. Calm down

I agree with Jeff there, what a useless test, basically funding waste...and yea i never get the abundance of seats on these buses ... surely majority of people can stand the 3 min journey .

Btw, being automated does absolutely nothing for the travel time, tarmac bus already travel best possible route in an airport ( and if such not available, the airport has bigger issues to solve )

Great news. In the future public transport will be safer and cheaper.

eah, that sounds worthwhile, only 20 or 30 trips needed per flight.

This is a test, not the long-term solution.

The journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step. The sooner we introduce driverless technology, the better.

"Our hope is to be able to offer users autonomous buses by the Tokyo 2020 Olympics," said ANA project chief Tadakatsu Yamaguchi.

It's a nice thought until one hits a pedestrian or gets a flat tire

That's not the least bit scary.