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Nearly two years ago, we spoke with the chief executive officer of Imagry, Eran Ofir, about the Israeli company’s “mapless” self-driving technology and its planned on-road tests with Otokar. At the UITP global summit, held in the German city of Hamburg between 15-18 June, Truck & Bus Builder spoke with Suhail Habib, an engineer at the company, to get an update on the company’s activities.
In 2023, Imagry had one public transport project on the go and another in the pipeline. The first trial, an autonomous shuttle service on the campus of the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, has now been running for two and a half years, and in late 2024, T&BB reported that the second project – putting a self-driving bus on a public route in Nahariya – was launched following approval from the Israeli ministry of transportation.
Moreover, Imagry now has several more projects in development in Europe and Japan. On the former, Habib told T&BB that a large operator is working with Imagry and shuttle bus manufacturer eVersumon the early stages of an autonomous pilot. The company is also looking for a North American operator to partner with, although Habib commented that the smaller relative size of its public transit sector makes America a less viable business proposition for self-driving buses than other markets.
Imagry’s unique selling point is its “mapless” software which does not require a high-definition map to be preinstalled in the autonomous vehicle before it is deployed on a new route. Habib said that one of the benefits of this setup is flexibility, and he pointed to Imagry’s partnership with Continental on autonomous valet parking as an example. The same software used in the buses deployed in Israel – with their array of up to eight cameras all around the vehicle – can be quickly adapted to a car with a single fisheye camera for automatic navigation around a parking lot. Habib also mentioned that Imagry is looking into new applications of its technology such as last-mile delivery: the process of taking the vehicle to the depot and loading up with goods and parcels – which extends the driver’s shift and involves considerable time spent waiting – could be easily automated, limiting the need for a human driver to the more complicated task of delivering the goods to their final destinations.
When questioned about commercialising the technology, Habib replied that the main drivers of the transition to self-driving buses in public transportation are the operators and the local transport authorities rather than the OEMs. While self-driving trucks are set for commercial launches in the USA in the next two years, Habib told T&BB there are no firm dates yet for autonomous buses.
