We welcome this week’s news that UK Government is investing in buses and bus infrastructure. It’s great the Government recognises the societal and environmental benefits of mass transport. Buses are invaluable to both urban and rural communities, keeping the arteries in and out of towns and cities running smoothly, cutting congestion and connecting rural villages. Bus fares remain affordable to many in a world where prices for other forms of transport are heading in one direction. Fusion Processing is a leading technology supplier to the bus industry. Our products, available now, meaning there is an opportunity to improve the safety, passenger experience and punctuality of future buses.

The team here at Fusion Processing are working closely with a number of innovative partners to deliver the world’s most advanced AV Level 4 autonomous bus trial, CAVforth. Later this year a fleet of five autonomous buses will service a 15-mile route between Edinburgh and Fife, across the Forth Road Bridge carrying up to 10,000 passengers a week. In the development of sensing and control systems for autonomous vehicles, Fusion Processing has created a raft of high technology products which can be both built into new buses or retrofitted to existing stock to provide unprecedented levels of safety and Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). These include our CycleEye® units; a cyclist detection system that can be retrofitted to large vehicles to alert the drivers to the presence of cyclists alongside them, thereby ensuring collisions are avoided.

Developed over one million miles, Fusion Processing’s innovative technology ensures CycleEye® reliably alerts the driver with an audible alert. CycleEye® can distinguish between cyclists and other objects, including pedestrians and other vehicles, providing protection day and night, even in the most challenging of poor visibility conditions. An evolution of the CycleEye product is Fusion’s CycleEye CMS (Camera Mounted System), a new technology that combines an HD camera feed with radar to identify cyclists in the vehicles’ blind spots will give an audible and visual alert whilst feeding an image to tablets mounted on the vehicle’s A pillars. Visual enhancements can be overlaid to highlight detected cyclists and pedestrians, reducing the driver’s cognitive load and enabling them to focus on the task in hand. Replacing the wing mirrors will not only eliminate the possibility of the mirrors clipping passing vulnerable road users, but reduces the vehicles frontal area, cutting drag and improving fuel efficiency. Another Fusion technology that is about to go on a live trial with buses in London is our pedestrian detection system. People will often run for the bus when they see one at their stop or disembark and dash across the road in front of the vehicle. Fusion’s unique pedestrian detection system will detect and recognise anyone crossing in front of the bus and automatically inhibit the engine, stopping the bus pulling away whilst the driver may be distracted looking for a gap in the traffic. The future for mass transport is bright and 2020 is set to be an exciting year for Fusion Processing, our partners, the wider transport industry and crucially, passengers. Stay tuned for updates.