Navya Technologies is a 2-year-old company based in Lyon, France, and its vehicle, the Arma, will be tested and used for tours at the 32-acre simulated village on the University of Michigan's North Campus.
Slightly smaller than a typical airport shuttle van, the Arma is powered by a 33 kilowatt-hour battery pack that can be charged in five to eight hours. Its maximum speed is about 25 m.p.h. There is no steering wheel, which maximizes the space for passengers.
At full capacity there are 11 seats, while four passengers have to stand.
CEO Christophe Sapet said the vehicle is priced at about $250,000. So far they have been deployed in the French cities of Bordeaux and Lyon, where they are assembled, as well as to shuttle workers at a nuclear power plant near Civaux.
Carrie Morton, deputy director of the Mobility Transformation Center, which manages Mcity, said the van will be used to give tours of the test center. Eventually it may be used to transport U-M students if it meets federal motor vehicle safety standards, but there is no specific timetable for that.
Navya will give test rides in the Arma next month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, said Andy Rogers, head of the company's U.S. operations.
Henri Coron, vice president of sales, said there are eight LiDAR units that work together with radar, cameras and sensors to detect its path.
The short loop around MCity took seven minutes to complete, included a short tunnel and was uneventful There was a little residue from Thursday's snowfall on the course that did not present any problem for the vehicle.
Wintry weather, especially heavy snow, is still regarded as a challenge for autonomous vehicles because the navigating software and machine-driven vision can be hindered by falling snow.
One Navya engineer said he tested the van Thursday during the snowfall and was able to add some software coding that instructed the cameras and sensors to ignore the snow.
Rogers, who works from a small office near Boston, said Navya is looking for a location in the U.S. where it could produce more of the vans if demand grows. The company has quintupled its work force from 20 to 100 in the last year, Sapet said.
In addition to testing at Mcity, Navya becomes the 62nd company affiliated with the center. Morton said Navya also will participate in TechLab, a venture launched this past summer to give U-M engineering students an opportunity to work with start-up companies in the autonomous and connected vehicle area.
©2016 the Detroit Free Press Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
