Santa Clara University's three-month driverless shuttle pilot - an intra-campus transit system, from my perspective - will look at which model works best for satisfying travel demand, the choices being (1) the conventional fixed-route transit model, or (2) a demand-response, you-call/we-pick-up model. However, it will be a while before any data is produced because university students will not be allowed to ride the golf-cart vehicles for at least the first month. Something about safety; I'm sure the parents appreciate that.
Driverless bus in China
Yutong Bus, a Chinese transit vehicle manufacturer, has successfully tested a driverless bus. The manufacturer exports to 120 different countries and sells over 60,000 buses a year. This was just one successful drive, but it is nice to see a vehicle manufacturer aiming to bring driverless technology to the transit market.
Google monthly report
Nice tidbits and tea leaves in the Google monthly report on its driverless comings, goings, and progress. Google is emphasizing the safety of its vehicles in California and Texas traffic, doing well by pedestrians, not crashing into deer (or visa versa), and continuing to rack up driverless miles - over two million and counting, according to Google. Next up will be pod cars in Austin (just the old models are there now) and figuring out the venue riders will want use to enter destination information. Smartphones are a likely choice. A question I've not seen Google mention is whether it will produce shared-ride or transit driverless vehicles. Those pods are cute, in a smurf kind of way, but do we really want to exchange current congestion for a sea of adorable pods and endless parking lots with identical G-cars?
Speaking of pods, two-seater, driverless prototype cars will soon be on the road in a city in Germany. The birthplace of Frederick Engels (Karl Marx's pal), Wuppertal, now a down-on-its-heels former rust belt manufacturing center, will host the mini-cars on a test track on a stretch of city street that offers a diversity of driving challenges, including the presence of pedestrians.
Laser focus - cheaper and lighter
As with most innovations, the prototypes and early models are expensive. Now, the expensive technology that Google is using as the eyes of its driverless pods, called LIDAR (a mix of light and radar), is being manipulated, if you will (let's be clear: this technology is beyond me and I rely on others to explain it), by other companies and universities.
The University of California at Berkeley has come up with - or worked hard to develop - a cheaper, lighter version of LIDAR technology and hardware. Seems that this team has gotten the cost reduced from about $80k to $10. And they are aiming even lower.
And on the long route
Toyota continues to bank on a slow road to driverless and a long phase of partially autonomous vehicles. The company is putting its money where its mouth is - $50 million of it - by funding MIT and Stanford as joint research centers. An impressive robotics guy, Gill Pratt, has been hired to oversee the effort.
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