World's First Self-Driving Bullet Train to Appear in China

News in Asia
World's First Self-Driving Bullet Train to Appear in China

China Railways announced last week that the world's first self-driving bullet train would be launched by 2022 to become fully operational for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

The train will travel at a speed of 350 km/h and serve the Beijing - Zhangjiakou intercity railway. The state-of-the-art self-driving speed rail system compising a variety of technologies, from cloud computing and IoT to AI and big data will be used to operate trains. The new high-speed train system will feature facial recognition for check-in, robots for carrying luggage and similarly advanced services.

Trains will be completely operated by the automatic train operation (ATO) system. It will check when the train is ready for departure from the platform, supervise its travel between the stations making adjustments to travel time when necessary, stop the train and control the doors opening and closing. Basically, there will be an operator in each train, too, but all they will need to do is to push the start button. 

Zhangjiakou is a city in northwestern Hebei province in Northern China sitting 195 km northwest of Beijing. It is a popular tourist destination with an abundance of natural attractions – from high mountains to deep valleys to rocky pathways. In 2022, the city will host the Winter Olympics.

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