<div>Autonomous vehicle technologies have become increasingly popular over the last
few years. One of their most important application is autonomous shuttle buses
that could radically change public transport systems. In order to enhance the
availability of shuttle service, this article outlines a series of
interconnected challenges and innovative solutions to optimize the operation of
autonomous shuttles based on the experience within the Shuttle Modellregion
Oberfranken (SMO) project. The shuttle shall be able to work in every weather
condition, including the robustness of the perception algorithm. Besides, the
shuttle shall react to environmental changes, interact with other traffic
participants, and ensure comfortable travel for passengers and awareness of
VRUs. These challenging situations shall be solved alone or with a
teleoperator’s help. Our analysis considers the basic sense–plan–act
architecture for autonomous driving. Critical components like object detection,
pedestrian tracking, trajectory planning, and teleoperation are analyzed, and
concepts for overcoming the challenges mainly in these components are
presented.</div>