Media-based attractions specialist, CAVU Designwerks, has unveiled its intelligent trackless dark ride vehicle, the first of its kind in the industry.
The trackless vehicle features intelligent self-driving units, which are used in warehouse facilities in the manufacturing sector. CAVU’s self-driving vehicles (SDV) are intelligent, autonomous and can adapt to different environments.
With proprietary software technology built into each vehicle, the need for power cables, tracks and wire systems of the floor is eliminated. There is also no requirement for external infrastructure for navigation, show equipment integration, sets and other attraction vehicles. The SDVs are also able to identify objects in their path and navigate around them.
CAVU’s intelligent dark ride vehicles enable theme park operators to provide visitors with a dark ride experience that relies on significantly less infrastructure and space than other dark ride vehicles.
The vehicles are available to two models – standard and plus. With the standard model, a total of eight passengers can fit into the car, which can rotate 360 degrees, and move forwards and backwards. The plus model seats six passengers and is equipped with three DOF motion, with roll, heave and pitch. The plus vehicle also comes with up to ten onboard special effects.
Mark Stepanian, VP innovation and engineering for CAVU, spoke about the new intelligent vehicles for dark rides: “As an integrator, CAVU’s method of developing a new ride system is to take an existing proven technology and integrate that into our rides.
“CAVU is partnering with a leader in industrial robotics technology to use their proven autonomous self-driving platform as the base of our trackless dark ride vehicle,” Stepanian added.
CAVU’s self-driving vehicles were launched at the IAAPA Expo 2019 in Orlando.
Article first appeared on InterPark.