Yandex will operate both the vehicles within the city for free of charge and keep a safety engineer in the passenger seat. Residents can order rides to multiple set destinations such as the university, the stadium, residential blocks, and the local business center. Currently, approximately 100 passengers have agreed to participate in the testing of the driverless ride-hailing service and received a link to order rides through a Telegram chatbot.

Yandex unveiled a prototype of its self-driving Prius last year. The company says that in the future, it plans to expand its driverless ride-hailing service, adding more destinations and vehicles and removing the safety rider.

Source: Yandex

Upon downloading the AutoX app, users can browse and order items including fresh perishables, vegetables, fruits, etc. and these groceries will be well preserved in a temperature-controlled environment throughout their driverless ride over.

AutoX’s Level 4 autonomous driving system places emphasis on inexpensive but high-resolution cameras as the primary sensor, rather than expensive LiDAR laser arrays and other costly sensors. AutoX’s high resolution camera sensing enables the AI to safely detect small objects such as kids and pets, and see farther ahead for longer distance compared to other autonomous driving technologies that heavily rely on LiDAR.

AutoX’s grocery delivery and mobile store pilot will roll out in two phases: the first pilot is in San Jose, with phase two expanding the pilot west to Mountain View and Palo Alto, with more delivery partners joining soon.

Source: AutoX

In this demonstration experiment, Hinomaru Traffic will run an automatic driving taxi as a taxi operator using RoboCar MiniVan, an automatic driving vehicle developed by ZMP with a distance of about 5.3 km connecting Otemachi Financial City Grand Cube (Chiyoda Ward Ward, Tokyo) and Roppongi Hills (Minato-ku, Tokyo), utilization measures such as eliminating driver shortage in urban areas with high demand, ICT will verify the dispatch service using technology.

This demonstration experiment was selected as a support project “Business Model Construction Utilizing Automatic Driving Technology” that Tokyo Metropolitan Government started this fiscal year in order to further accelerate the practical application of automatic driving technology, and the government and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government jointly It will be implemented with the support of the “Tokyo Auto Travel One Stop” installed. Passengers solicited in advance will unlock the door and make payments through a smartphone app, paying 1,500 yen (about $13) for a one-way ride.

The companies plan to hold test drives on a second route later this year, connecting Haneda airport and central Tokyo. Hinomaru and ZMP said they plan to ask local taxi firms facing serious shortages of drivers to form a syndicate with them, a move aimed at reducing the cost of introducing the new system.

Source: ZMP