The world’s first self-driving taxis are picking up passengers in Singapore.
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The trial, of a robo-taxi from nuTonomy, a company that develops state-of-the-art software for self-driving cars, will run in the country’s one-north business district. Uber plans to begin offering self-driving taxi rides in Pittsburgh in a few weeks’ time.
The service will start small six cars now, growing to a dozen by the end of the year. The ultimate goal, say nuTonomy officials, is to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018, which will help sharply cut the number of cars on Singapore’s congested roads.
“The trial represents an extraordinary opportunity to collect feedback from riders in a real-world setting, and this feedback will give nuTonomy a unique advantage as we work toward deployment of a self-driving vehicle fleet in 2018”.
For now pick and drop is limited to specific locations and users must have an invitation from nuTonomy to use the service.
Select residents can now use nuTonomy’s ride-hailing app to book a free ride.
All vehicles are fitted with six sets of Lidar, which is a detection system. There are also two cameras on the dashboard, which constantly scan for obstacles and are even able to detect changes in traffic lights. That said, the company has revealed that these trial rides are still on an ongoing basis and follows private testing that began early this year, in April 2016.
“Quite frankly I think Uber is the Goliath and we need to show that our technology is working and getting to a level of maturity that is viable for the marketplace”, Doug Parker, chief operating officer of nuTonomy, said in an interview Thursday.
But she quickly grew more comfortable.
Iagnemma’s company isn’t the only one trying to master the art and science of autonomous ride-sharing. A driver will be seated in the front of the auto, ready to take control if anything goes wrong.
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nuTonomy CEO Karl Iagnemma said the company is confident that its software can make good decisions, adding that he hopes the company’s leadership in autonomous driving will lead to partnerships with automakers, tech companies, logistics companies and more.
