Two reports in the past few days about creative driverless developments out of the University of Washington Bothell, a campus I had never heard of before (probably because I have lived my entire life on the East Coast).
1. Driverless tricycle - so I'm not sure why anyone would need this and does this machine pedal for you? Transport packages? Right now, this is an incredibly early prototype that goes in circles and thrills only the students working on it. But you never know where it will go. I wrote about this tricycle yesterday, very briefly, at the end of a pretty unrelated post.
2. The ELF, a tricycle that looks like a mini-car, is driverless and being developed with funding from Amazon. It is solar powered and can hold up to 550 pounds of persons and/or merchandise. That's a lot of books. The startup working with UW-Bothell is called Organic Transit. You can already buy a non-driverless ELF from Organic Transit. They come in cute colors and cost $7000 and above. I'm not sure you can bring it up to the office; might need conventional parking, though it is considered a bicycle and can travel at the speed of a heavy bike. This is definitely a vehicle that can go to the supermarket, but it might be really slow on steep hills on the way home.
This video seems a bit like technology-meets-Reading-Rainbow in its approach, but it does show possibilities for the future in travel and in sitting at home watching your drone have a wonderful day outside. Or the drone can check traffic up ahead or how long the line is outside your favorite restaurant or whether the parking lot up ahead is full. The car comes with a drone. The 3D-printed car has not been made, but Local Motors is in exactly that business, with work on 3D-printed driverless vehicles.
Beware: The video is part of a public relations effort. Korean initiative has sensors seeing colors The sensors for driverless vehicles that are being developed in Korea do not only see colors - as in traffic signals - they communicate with sensors on roads. Driverless meets CV. The CV or connected vehicle and road sensors give each driverless vehicle information from beyond its own little moving structure. Working on this are a mobile phone carrier, SK Telecom and Seoul National University (SNU) Intelligent Vehicle IT Research Center.
Dominos is working hard to take out the human delivery person from its delivery service. The pizza company has worked with a robotics company to develop a drone that is currently being tested in a pilot program in Australia. Like Google, Uber, and others doing driverless testing, there is a human accompanying the Dominos drone delivery unit. Concentrating on delivery, there is a Dominos' robotics unit - or DRU. Supposedly, the drone keeps the mediocre (at best) pizza warm.
Which robotics company is the Dominos partner? Marathon Targets, based in Sydney. The robot can traverse grass or ground as well as sidewalks, but not stairs. Business Insider posted a photo montage that explains the service and shows the logo-labeled Dominos drone. Cautionary note: As a native New Yorker, I am offended by the very idea and definitely by the taste of Dominos pizza.
Sidewalk drones In terms of surface transportation, and avoiding the large topic of flying drones, there is a company, amusingly called Starship Technologies, that has invented a delivery drone that travels on sidewalks. This sidewalk drone will be "99 percent driverless," with a human at a remote location who will be able to step in to operate the drone. Think Chinese food delivery without a human. The drone is approximately 40 pounds and can cross streets. I'm imagining R2D2. Transit bots in a clean country Switzerland is soon to be host to a new driverless transit service that will serve the tourist area of the Swiss city of Sion, population about 33,000. Small bot-like buses will start operation in the spring of 2016. Isn't the yellow and black design cute?
The bot bus service is the result of a collaboration between PostBusand BestMile. PostBusis the leading Swiss provider of public bus service, but it also provides rural and regional bus transit in areas of France and Liechtenstein. BestMile's master plan BestMile would like to see its bot buses not compete with existing transit, but providing first mile/last mile service. This is BestMile's first commercial contract. The company is also involved with CityMobil2 in Europe. First mile/last mile confounds traditional transit Why is important? If a person is far from the bus stop or the intersection nearby is not designed well for pedestrians, then that person will not use transit. But if a small bus or a bikeshare can safely transport the person for the first mile/last mile, then transit suddenly is a potentially attractive option. In the US, the first mile/last mile problem is huge due to low-density suburbs and street networks unfriendly to pedestrians and bikers. Someone walking a few blocks should not have to confront a completely inaccessible, dangerous intersection, but that is the reality in much of the country. Bots, in my opinion, could be a partial solution. Improving the pedestrian street network would also go a long way.
