Danai Pathomvanich
Jun 29, 2015
Singapore’s shared autonomous driving initiative is scheduled to reduce cars on the road by as much as 80 per cent and decrease travel times and pollution in the next decade.
This initiative and Google’s more widely-known self-driving car project are helping us imagine mobile transportation’s robotic future.
Fleets of self-driving cars
In a recent Foreign Affairs article, “The robots are coming – how technological breakthroughs will transform everyday life”, MIT professor Daniela Rus said Singapore “shared autonomous driving” initiative will include fleets of self-driving cars that provide customized transportation.
After dropping off one passenger, driverless cars will pick up the next rider, coordinating with other self-driving cars in a system designed to minimize traffic and wait times.
Next great automotive technology advancement
Autonomous vehicles are currently being promoted as the next great advancement in automobile technology.
Terence Lee in a recent Tech in Asia article said self-driving cars will free people from the drudgery of driving in heavy traffic, which means more time for work and play.
“Artificially intelligent drivers are also safer than human ones, since they won’t fall asleep, aren’t ruled by emotions, and have a wider field of vision.”
Trillion dollar industry
Car owners, Lee said could monetize their vehicle when they’re not in use (about 90 percent of the time) by offering it to car- sharing services.
The vehicle could drive its owner to work, then proceed to drop the kids at school.
“.... it could then pick up other passengers, even deliver goods on behalf of an e-commerce company, and then circle back to pick up the owner just as she leaves the office for home.”
Under this scenario, car owners would be paid fees for the cars use, and for insurance policies bought by the car-sharing company to protect against damages.
The autonomous share vehicle concept, Lee said fixes the “rebalancing’ problem” in which shared vehicles are in short supply because of the difficulty getting the car to the next customer, once the previous user drops off the vehicle.
Urban planning implications
Self-driving cars also have profound urban planning implications.
Some forms of public transport, such as the Light Rail Transit (LRT), might become obsolete because their routes are often fixed and inflexible.
“....a network of self-driving vehicles would solve this problem as the routes they take are dynamic.
As these vehicles are utilized more, the need for parking spaces and roads will eventually be reduced.
Traffic jams: things of the past
Using a series of simulations that combined route optimization algorithms with Singapore’s vehicular movement data, Emilio Frazzoli of the Singapore-MIT alliance for research and technology (SMART) said researchers found it was possible to cut down the country’s car population – consisting of both private and public transport – by over half from 800,000 to 300,000.
“That is if Singapore residents rely purely on autonomous car sharing services with an average waiting time of less than 15 minutes during rush hour.”
Political and legal implications
In assessing shared autonomous driving, Lee said the state must consider many political and legal implications when robots take over the steering wheel.
“Taxi drivers, for example, would be put out of jobs, which means the government has to find ways to re-skill these workers to keep them employed.”
Aside from public transport policies, many current legal regulations must also be reconsidered, including licensing, accident liability and insurance.
Operationally, the vehicles must also be secured from malicious hackers, which may mean costly built in redundancies in the event of a malfunction.
More about software
Cars of the future, Lee added will become less about hardware and more about software, because car makers lack the expertise to successfully reimagine vehicles.
“Google, on the other hand, has been building apps for a decade, and it has the motivation to expand into the automotive business, since its revenue model is about getting as many eyeballs as possible onto its ads. This means the less time consumers spent driving, the better.”
