Škoda Group, a leading Central European manufacturer of vehicles for public transport, is working on the development of a so-called smart depot, i.e. a depot in which trams will move on their own without human operators. The pilot project could be ready in five years, the development will cost hundreds of millions of crowns. Josef Volek, who is responsible for the technical development of the smart depot solution at Škoda Group, announced at the Rail Business Days trade fair in Ostrava yesterday.
According to him, the smart depot project could be generalized as the digitalization of the depot. “Today, trams inside the depot are always controlled by drivers or other operators. Our goal is to introduce driverless operation as part of the digitalization of that operation. Such a major milestone is that the trams will already be running there as autonomous vehicles, they will just be given a destination to move to and they will be able to cross there on their own,” Volek described.
But it’s not just about setting up the tram to get somewhere on its own. “The technology already exists, we could actually send the tram somewhere. But there it’s about the legal framework, about the safety concept of the vehicles and the whole operation. Those are the things that we have to put together, do the design of the depot concept accordingly, and create an operational concept of how it can all work there to minimize the risks,” Volek said.
He said the digital depot will be the first step towards a self-driving tram operation. “It is an advantage that untrained people don’t normally get into the depot. There are staff working there who are trained, who are aware of the risks. So we can work with the risks there much more easily, we can for example isolate people somewhere from the vehicles if we come to the conclusion that the risk of some kind of personal injury is high. That’s what we’re working with, and that’s why the depot is the first step towards autonomy,” Volek said.
In about five years, he said, the company would like to have the project at a stage where it deploys the technology and starts to verify how everything works, collect data, create a legal framework for it. “We have a plan set up for that stage, where the traffic in the depot is still managed by a human, a dispatcher, but the vehicles are already able to move there on their own, so we would like to do that within five years,” Volek said.
The 8,000-employee Škoda Group, formerly Škoda Transportation, produces trams, electric locomotives, commuter trains, metro sets, electric buses and trolleybuses. It has several production sites in the Czech Republic, including one in Finland. It invests over CZK 2 billion annually in research and development. In 2021, the group generated CZK 15.5 billion in revenue. The company is part of the PPF Group.
Source: Škoda Group and CTK
Photo: Škoda Group
