There is a moment on the A21 bus, at around midnight, when the man in the driver’s seat presses a small red button on his dashboard.
He smiles, then lets go of the steering wheel and lifts his feet from the pedals. The vehicle continues to glide through the streets of South Korea’s capital, Seoul, turning corners and stopping at traffic lights. No-one on board seems to notice.
“One day all the buses in Seoul will be driverless,” says Park Kang-uk, head of operations at SUM (Smart YoUr Mobility).
His company has spent the past four years developing the city’s new self-driving night bus, which authorities say is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. These kinds of buses and cars are known as autonomous vehicles or AVs.
“There are fewer and fewer people who want to drive buses, especially at night,” Mr Park says. “This is the perfect solution to help fill that void.”