I founded ClariNet, the world's first internet based business, am Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a fellow of the Foresight Institute. My current passion is self-driving vehicles and robots.
Many companies, from Waymo to Tesla to Amazon ’s Zoox to Baidu’s Apollo want to make a robotaxi, a self-driving Uber-like service. First, they have to build a safe and reliable self-driving service that can go for 30,000 trips without a mistake. Few have done that, but it turns out there’s a lot more than needs to be done to build a service, what might be called the “infrastructure” of a robotaxi service.
Most of the attention goes on that self-driving system. It’s the big innovation, and for most companies the unsolved problem. The infrastructure details seem less like rocket science, but they’re still a lot of work and require innovation. They’re also one of the bigger challenges in making a service scale. Even if one has a car that can self-drive in most locations, you still can’t operate the robotaxi anywhere until you build infrastructure, region by region.
While navigation maps can be contracted from players like Google, Here and TomTom, all maps need some means to update them due to dynamic changes, including construction. At a bare minimum maps are needed to handle pick-up, destinations and routing.Vehicles may be ready to drive in a wide variety of locations, but that doesn’t mean companies will deploy them vacant without first testing them and certifying that they are indeed up to snuff on every road they’ll carry passengers on.
You need a sophisticated system to manage your fleet, direct them to tasks, and position them in advance in good places to handle upcoming requests. Plus a great deal more—this is a fairly complex system, though it doesn’t vary much from place to place.
Messes will get made. In an Uber, the driver cleans it up. Cars may go to their depot or to a contracted car wash. Those who hire out a private car can clean it at end of shift but need a cleaning depot for any mid-shift cleanings. Robocars don’t park, they stand, but there’s a limit to the number of free standing spots. In addition to depots, operators will need to contract with owners of parking, and a way to pay for them, as they can’t feed physical meters.
Self-Driving Tesla Waymo Cruise Zoox Amazon Driverless
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