Requirements of Automated Vehicles and Depots for the Initial Step of Automated Public Transport

In recent years, the development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) has progressed rapidly. In order to make use of the advantages of self-driving busses, it is necessary to prepare the bus depots for automated vehicles. The aim of this paper is to investigate the associated optimization potential, to use it to raise the attention to the necessity of automated depots and to underline the profitability of a fully automated depot. In addition, automated driving on public roads is not feasible without restrictions, due to the legal framework in Europe. However, these regulations do not apply within cordoned off areas, as they are private property. Therefore terminals and depots offer already the possibility for test fields.Accordingly, and for initiating the preparation of depots, this paper first presents the state of the art of self-driving passenger cars, followed by automated busses. Subsequently the current operational tasks of a selected exemplary depot in Munich is recorded. For the creation of a concept for automated depots several requirements are presented. These include not only the technical requirements for the bus fleet and the Depot Operating System (DOS), but also demands on the infrastructure, the communication interface and the legal framework. Subsequently, a gap analysis is made by comparing the requirements and the state of the art.