Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA) and Ministry of Transport (MOT) have awarded projects to two consortia for the design, development and trial of Autonomous Environmental Service Vehicles (AESVs) for street cleaning there.

The flagship projects are the first to be conducted under the NEA's Environmental Robotics Program, reports Traffic Technology Today. This aims to better optimize resources, drive innovation, push widespread technology adoption, and improve productivity across the Environmental Services (ES) sector.

Both projects will apply autonomous vehicle (AV) technology to commercial mechanical road sweepers. The objective is to improve productivity in utility operations and alleviate traffic congestion by shifting utility operations to off-peak hours.

Each of the projects will be carried out over a duration of 18 months, and will comprise a development phase over a period of 12 months, followed by a proof-of-concept (POC) trial over a six-month period.