Feb 18, 2020

SB Drive Corp., a subsidiary of SoftBank Corp., announced it is collaborating with Sensible 4 Oy, the Finland-based developer of the all-weather self-driving bus “GACHA.” Both companies will work to accelerate the adoption of autonomous buses in Europe and Japan. As a first step, SB Drive’s “Dispatcher” self-driving fleet management platform will be linked with GACHA for self-driving operations on public roads in Finland. Thanks to its highly accurate location and obstacle detection technologies that utilize advanced sensors, Sensible 4’s GACHA can drive autonomously on preset routes even in the most challenging of weather conditions, including heavy rain, snow and fog. SB Drive’s Dispatcher is a fleet management platform capable of remotely operating multiple autonomous vehicles while simultaneously managing and monitoring vehicles. The Dispatcher platform features AI technology capable of detecting movement within vehicles, enabling it to remotely monitor inside vehicles and warn passengers of danger. Dispatcher also learns from past events and their locations to improve operation routes and fleet management settings. Departure and destination locations can also be set remotely to operate vehicles. In addition to conducting trials that link Dispatcher and GACHA, SB Drive and Sensible 4 are cooperating to form partnerships with automotive manufacturers with a view to establishing self-driving bus operations. Harri Santamala , CEO of Sensible 4, said, “For Sensible 4, the Japanese market is very exciting. We are building partnerships to provide solutions to the automotive industry and consequently improve the mobility of our societies. Our approach has been to focus on our core technologies and partner with companies such as SB Drive to jointly offer more than each partner could do separately. We decided together to take a pragmatic approach to this collaboration, and hence started it by integrating SB Drive’s Dispatcher with our full-stack solution to utilize it with our ongoing GACHA pilots in Finland.” Dispatcher currently provides remote management and monitoring for ten types of autonomous vehicles, including NAVYA’s “NAVYA ARMA,” Suzuki’s “SOLIO*1,” TLD’s towing tractor “TractEasy*2” and Advanced Smart Mobility’s customized Hino “Poncho” and “Liesse.” SB Drive will continue to expand the compatibility of its autonomous fleet management and monitoring software to an even greater range of autonomous vehicles.