Project MINGA: Automated city buses - for the future of urban mobility

Highly automated driverless solutions in urban areas have significantly improved cost-effectiveness compared with driver-assisted services and offer users safe and reliable mobility.

People living in cities in particular benefit from better air quality, less congestion and noise, and the gain of unneeded parking space as living space in a largely automated, connected and emission-free urban transport system.

Project objective

The goal of the MINGA research project (MINGA = Munich's Automated Urban Transport with Ridepooling, Solo Bus and Bus Platooning) is to create new services for more effective use of road space by developing an operational automated bus platoon and an initial test deployment in regular service.

Two identical 12-meter vehicles will drive directly behind each other in an information-controlled network, with the second vehicle traveling without a driver.

Project schedule

The project is scheduled to run until December 2025. It is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport (BMDV) to the tune of around 13 million euros as part of the "Autonomous and Connected Driving in Public Transport" funding guideline.

ITIV's contribution

After the TEMPUS project, MINGA is the next step towards automated driving on the way to the mobility turnaround. Together with our partners Stadtwerke München, EBUSCO, FZI and the City of Munich, we at ITIV will contribute our know-how in the following areas in work package 4:

• Sensory protection
• V2V communication
• Systems engineering