With congratulatory remarks, officials from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. (PIDC), PennDot, and other agencies unveiled Pennsylvania’s first self-driving shuttle Thursday. It will begin testing early next year, and be fully deployed by spring to ferry passengers between the Navy Yard and the southernmost stop on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line, typically a 17-minute ride.

The vehicle, which started as a Ford van chassis, has a 360-degree view of the road and GPS navigation accurate to within 1 centimeter, with radar and LIDAR — a light-based sensing and detection system — Pilipowskyj said…

The automated shuttle project was developed and financed in cooperation with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), the city transportation department, Drexel University, and PennDot. A law signed in early November by Gov. Tom Wolf allows autonomous vehicles to operate on the state’s roads — eventually, with regulator approval, they can do so without human drivers as backups.