GOLDEN, Colo. (KDVR) — Students at the Colorado School of Mines will have a new way of getting around campus these days: by driverless shuttles. 

It looks like a shuttle. It sounds like a shuttle. That is because it is a shuttle. Except for one little thing: there is no driver. It is autonomous. 

”The goal of autonomy is to have fully driverless technology so the vehicle will operate on a virtual rail by itself,“ EasyMile senior vice president Sharad Agarwal said.

EasyMile is behind the shuttle called the Mines Rover, and it is one of nine that are now in service at the Colorado School of Mines campus in Golden. 

”This was important for the students,” said Gary Bowersock, associate vice president for Infrastructure and Operations at the School of Mines. “One of our alumni was a deployment engineer with EasyMile, and they approached us and this project came, and the students wanted a shuttle service for quite some time.”

Built by EasyMile, the futuristic people-pusher moves students around campus on pre-programmed routes.

Each Mines Rover holds six passengers, has a top speed of 12 mph and is battery-powered. So how does it know where to go? It is pre-programmed on what is described as an invisible rail.

Right now, every rover has a service ambassador on board to make sure the shuttle runs safely and everything goes according to plan.