From my Aug. 17 post, which was mostly about state-level activities in Pennsylvania and Arizona to attract driverless testing. It's not just testing anymore.
Uber will be the first, passing Google, Ford, GM, and others in the rear mirror - to bring driverless shared-use service to the public - only in Pittsburgh.
There will be drivers in the car, a la the drivers in the Google cars, but with paying passengers.
Quote from Bloomberg article: Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved.
There will be drivers in the car, a la the drivers in the Google cars, but with paying passengers.New bus in Europe
Driverless testing in Europe has been and continues to be transit friendly. A German-made driverless bus is being tested in Amsterdam. The autonomous system is called CityPilot; it is produced by Daimler.
Forget testing; call the taxibot
Ford is being bold with an announcement that it will have a driverless ride hailing operation in 2021 with vehicles that lack steering wheels and brakes. Ford is putting its money where its mouth is in terms of investment in small companies that will get the company further ahead in terms of LIDAR technology and machine vision technology. One of those is SAIPS, an Israeli company that is involved in AI and technology to help people who are visually impaired.
Like Google, Ford eschews the idea of partially self-driving vehicle development on the way to completely autonomous operations. It considers fully driverless to be safer than a partial system in which the driver is expected to be bored, but aware at all times.
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