ANN ARBOR, MI - The University of Michigan's North Campus already is noted as a hub of activity for driverless vehicles and technology development through Mcity, its 32-acre connected and automated vehicle test site.

Starting this fall, that technology will exit the test site and hit the roads of North Campus with the launch of a driverless shuttle service, the university announced Wednesday, June 21.

The service will use two fully-automated, 15-passenger, all-electric shuttles manufactured by French firm NAVYA to transport students, faculty and staff between UM's Engineering campus, which is located on North Campus, and the university's North Campus Research Complex (NCRC), located on Plymouth Road.

"This first-ever automated shuttle service on campus is a critical research project that will help us understand the challenges and opportunities presented by this type of mobility service and how people interact with it," said Huei Peng, director of Mcity, in a news release. "The shuttles will augment UM's busy campus bus service to provide another mobility option."

Mcity will study how passengers react to the vehicle as a way to gauge consumer acceptance of driverless technology. Exterior cameras will capture the reaction and behavior of other road users, especially bicyclists and pedestrians. Mcity also will track ridership and usage patterns, and survey users about their experience. The data gathered will help researchers understand how to design safer vehicles and how to operate them more efficiently.

The shuttle service will run on UM roads during business hours to start, with stops only at the Robert H. Lurie Engineering Center and the NCRC. There is no cost to riders, and the two shuttles will cover the 2-mile circular route roughly every 10 minutes. Hours of operation and the service area could be increased later if the technology proves effective and consumer acceptance supports expansion.

The fully autonomous, electric shuttle manufactured by NAVYA were introduced at Mcity in December 2016, becoming the first use of the ARMA vehicle in North America.

In addition to lidar, which uses invisible laser beams to build a view of the surrounding environment, and GPS for localization, the two NAVYA ARMA shuttles also are equipped with on-board cameras and Wi-Fi communications to capture data generated during operation.

Building on its partnership with UM at Mcity, NAVYA plans to begin assembling 20 of its fully autonomous electric shuttles in Southeast Michigan in the final quarter of 2017, creating more than 15 jobs.

The announcement of the shuttle service was made during Mcity's demo day on Wednesday, allowing members of the media to experience scenarios in which connected and automated vehicles respond to real and virtual vehicles in an augmented reality traffic simulation and how an automated vehicle avoids a forward collision with a vehicle that is outside its sensors' line-of-sight.