Too Many Driverless Restrictions in the States?

The answer seems to be "oh yes," at least for nuTonomy, started by MIT-related folks, which will be testing a shared-ride driverless service soon in Singapore. Singapore has been ambitious to push the driverless revolution. nuTonomy was also involved with the Singapore week-long pilot of ferrying around public garden visitors in a driverless golf cart.

nuTonomy claims that it's fleet management algorithms are so efficient that Singapore will be able to reduce by half its taxi fleet and keep the same level of service. We're talking about a current fleet of 700,000 taxis (Manhattan on steroids?). nuTonomy vehicles use LIDAR, which sometimes is capitalized and sometimes not.

Minnesota joins the race - a slow, state-by-state race

Minnesota is throwing its hat into the self-driving ring, but it is acting similarly to other gun-shy states. Report by Dec. 31, 2018; a big task force; blah, blah, blah. Nice to see, however, that people with disabilities are included in the rationale for the legislation along with generating revenue for the state.

One important tidbit: In terms of operating a self-driving vehicle, although a licensed driver must be available, that human does NOT have to be present in the vehicle. I re-read the text because I don't trust myself. Here it is, in bold, italic, and underlined.

a person who holds a class D license or its equivalent is present in the vehicle or is monitoring the vehicle from a remote location during operation, and in either case, the licensed person is able to take control of the vehicle's movements immediately, if necessary.

The bill, SF 2569, calls for a whopping $5 million. In case you did not get it, the previous sentence was dripping with sarcasm. Just yesterday, I wrote about Japan spending $3 TRILLION. I can't write trillion, dollars that is, without capital letters (woo, just did).

I'm sure that $5 million, with a chance to be near the Mary Tyler Moore statue, will be a huge temptation for those billion dollar companies. Maybe a tiny start up. Sarcasm dripping again. Okay, but if you do go to the Twin Cities, definitely have pancakes at Mickey's Diner in St. Paul. So, so good.