London is set for driverless car roll-out – so what comes next? | New Scientist – retweet https://t.co/KIVd1ZqEXC pic.twitter.com/mz30cSXYxu
— Will Corry (@slievemore) May 12, 2016
The French Riviera is lovely at this time of year. I’m zipping along the coast in an old Honda Civic. The steering wheel spins to take the car round a bend – but my hands stay in my lap. And since there’s no need to keep my eyes on the road, I’m free to enjoy the beachfront view. An oddly pixelated man with a two-dimensional windsurfer under his arm gives me the eye.
Sadly, my Riviera is being projected on a large wrap-around screen in a room-sized simulator in Wokingham, UK. As the car navigates the windy road, Nick Reed at the Transport Research Lab sits next to me and talks about the plan to deploy driverless cars in Greenwich, London, by the end of the year.
The Gateway project will see London become one of the first cities in the world to have driverless vehicles. The number and exact routes they will take have still to be decided, but a few months from now you will be able to jump into an autonomous pod (see picture, above) and be ferried to your destination along public roads. “It’ll be the first chance the public has had to experience driverless cars,” says Reed. “Not just the people on board, but the people sharing the space with them.”
This is the beginning of a revolution in transport, as the cars roll out slowly in small pilots in urban areas. In the UK, Greenwich, Milton Keynes, Coventry and Bristol will lead the way. Similar projects are happening in other cities around the world, including Singapore; Austin, Texas; Mountain View in California; and Ann Arbor in Michigan.
P&A Podcast #23D (Interview with Nick Reed, Transport Research Lab) https://t.co/06GlDyNaTr pic.twitter.com/F8CrdCZIPX
— Rob Gray (@ShakeyWaits) March 24, 2016