SmartDEPOT™ creates and leads a new category of public-transport vehicle: the smartbus — an ordinary city bus that drives itself inside the depot, with no driver on board. It starts autonomy where the return on investment is real today.

European bus operators face a structural driver shortage (roughly 105,000 unfilled positions, potentially 275,000 by 2028) and increasingly complex, electrifying depots where 25–35 minutes per bus per day is lost to non-revenue "shunting": parking, charging approach, wash and workshop staging, dispatch sequencing. SmartDEPOT™ automates these movements within a precisely scoped operational design domain — a private, fenced, mapped environment, at low speed, on predefined routes, under remote supervision. The autonomous mode is inactive on public roads, and the bus remains fully road-homologated.

The solution combines three integrated components: the SmartDEPOT™ ADS (multi-LiDAR 360° perception and onboard controller, factory-fitted by the city-bus OEM and certified within the vehicle's type approval), a drive-by-wire city bus, and SmartDEPOT™ Mission Control (the operator-facing supervision and orchestration layer).

The innovation is depot-first autonomy: reframing self-driving around the controlled, passenger-free depot makes it the first commercially deployable domain — where physics, safety and economics all work now, without public-road legislation. OEM factory-fit (not retrofit), LiDAR-first perception with no blind spots, and one control loop linking charging, maintenance and movement set it apart.

The impact is immediate: recovered driver time redeployed to passenger service, fewer low-speed depot collisions, optimised charging for electric fleets, and denser depot layouts — while building the safety evidence for broader autonomy. Developed and hosted in the EU, EU-compliant by design.

The future does not ride an ordinary bus.