Keith Naughton reports at Bloomberg today that Singapore will begin
test driving autonomous automobiles this year which may lead to
robot taxis by the end of the decade.
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Originally Posted by Keith Naughton, Bloomberg
The test will involve six autonomous autos, starting with the modified Audi Q5 the supplier used last year to travel from San Francisco to New York in self-driving mode. In Singapore, the cars initially will follow three predetermined routes and by 2019 will range freely based on customer requests, without a driver or a human minder, according to Glen DeVos, a Delphi senior vice president.
“We actually will have point-to-point automated mobility on demand with no driver in the car,” he said at a briefing with reporters at Delphi’s Troy, Michigan, operations base. “It’s one of the first, if not the very first, pilot programs where we’ll demonstrate mobility-on-demand systems.”
Singapore’s Land Transport Authority chose Delphi for the test as the city, like congested urban areas globally, looks to driverless vehicles to address growing gridlock. It asked Delphi to provide robot rides to get commuters to mass-transit stations so fewer cabs will be clogging the roads, DeVos said. Automakers are pouring money into developing autonomous cars as more than 9 billion people are expected to move to megacities over the next 25 years. Self-driving cars moving in harmony are expected to eventually ease congestion and make roads safer.
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Story here -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...apore-irbidct9
Philip E. Ross at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
Spectrum magazine web site also reports on the test of the Singaporean
self-driving taxi service.
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Originally Posted by Philip E. Ross, IEEE Spectrum
“It’s one of the first, if not the very first, pilot programs where we’ll demonstrate mobility-on-demand systems,” Glen DeVos, a Delphi senior vice president, told Bloomberg News at a press briefing at the company’s headquarters in Troy, Michigan. Mobility on demand is fancyspeak for ride-hailing, such as Uber and Lyft offer. DeVos added that later this year Delphi will announce similar programs in Europe and the United States.
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Originally Posted by Philip E. Ross, IEEE Spectrum
Singapore, an island, is a good testbed because of its compact size, sober drivers, unified government, and congested roads. Robotaxis can ease congestion because they should decrease the number of cars on the road and they rarely need a parking space.
A cab ride in a dense urban area can cost US $3 to 4 a mile, DeVos said. “We think we can get to 90 cents a mile.”
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Originally Posted by Philip E. Ross, IEEE Spectrum
Robotaxis will have to cope with Singapore’s tropical weather, which gets an average of 232 centimeters (92 inches) of rain a year, making it one of the wettest large cities in the world. That’s bad news for cameras and even LIDAR, although not for radar.
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Story here -
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-t...e-in-singapore
