TECH INSIDER: ZF All aboard Alexander Makowski, head of the autonomous mobility product line at ZF Group, discusses the increasing popularity of self-driving shuttles By Anthony James Last October saw leading autonomous transportation system provider ZF announce that it was expanding its relationship with Houston-based vehicle manufacturer Oceaneering International to deliver a “four-digit number” of ZF‘s Group Rapid Transport (GRT) shuttles to customers in the coming years. The company started 2023 by debuting a brand-new shuttle developed with US mobility services provider Beep at CES, designed specifically for autonomous driving in urban environments and mixed traffic. The company says this next-generation model complements its established GRT model, which is primarily designed for use in segregated lanes. Beep and ZF have plans to deliver “several thousand shuttles” to customers over the coming years, combining ZF’s autonomous transport system ZF’s original GRT shuttle (right) and next-generation shuttle (left) (ATS) with Beep’s mobility services and service management platform into a single-source autonomous mobility solution. The new shuttles are equipped with lidar, radar, camera and audio systems to provide precise environmental detection. This is complemented by the ZF ProConnect connectivity platform, which enables communication with any V2X infrastructure and the cloud. Meanwhile the Virtual Driver – ZF’s AD software – processes the huge volumes of information, derives safe driving strategies using AI, and passes them on as input to the onboard actuators, replacing the human driver and rendering the steering wheel and brake pedal redundant. The software stack consists of two major parts – the performance path and the safety path. The latter monitors comprehensive situations “AUTONOMOUS TRANSPORTATION IS NOT SO MUCH ABOUT THE VEHICLE ITSELF, BUT ALSO THE NEEDS OF AN ENTIRE SERVICE CONCEPT” 04 ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International January 2024