Erin Seils |
Unmanned robot taxis are set to make a global impact in the future of our technological world.
Britain has the first of three “pod” vehicles already being unveiled in Milton Keynes as part of a project to trial driverless vehicles in town centres.
The electric-powered LUTZ Pathfinder pod was shown to commuters and other members of the public outside Milton Keynes Central train station in early September. These two-seater vehicles travel at slow speeds, with a maximum speed of 15mph, because they are to be used in pedestrianised areas as another means of public transport.
The car will get a “brain” which will be provided by Oxford University’s Mobile Robotics Group to make the car aware of hazards such as people and bikes. Once the car has this, the public trials will begin, with the pods being driven in manual mode initially before being left on their own in automatic mode – with a human helper on hand in the unlikely event that something goes wrong.
Japan is no stranger to robots so it is not surprising that they will be running full trials of a robotic taxi service in 2016 courtesy of Robot Taxi Inc.
The unmanned service will provide rides to Kanagawa , a small district south of Tokyo. This service will be deployed to around 50 residents and will transport them from home to local grocery stores and places where public transport is not available. The vehicles are intended to help less-mobile elderly citizens get around.
Unlike the new vehicles in the UK, the robot taxis in Japan will travel on main roads where cars operated by humans also drive, travelling a distance of around three kilometres per journey. To ensure everything goes to plan, a “driver” will be in the car, but they won’t do anything unless the robot car malfunctions.
If everything goes smoothly, Robot Taxi aims to be a useful tool for tourists in more towns and cities by 2020, ready for the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Google, as well as many major car manufacturers, are developing self-driving vehicles of their own in this new industry which is estimated to be worth more than £900 billion* a year by 2025.
While Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder says that he loves driving he also said that in real life, enjoying it is probably about 1% of his experience and “Typically I’m in stop-and-go traffic, and some traffic jam, or just going from light to light on a pretty straight road, mostly just trying to make sure nobody does anything weird in front of me and I don’t crash into them.”
He believes that there is a future for both types of driving on our roads and that we’re not going to see no human drivers anytime soon.
*International Business Times Oct 2015
