Driverless taxis could be on our streets sooner than we think, as ITV News Science Correspondent Martin Stew reports
Would you get in a taxi without a driver?
Today Uber made that very offer.
It launched autonomous taxis in Austin, Texas and wants to bring something similar to London.
According to Noah Zych, Uber’s Head of Autonomous Delivery, this technology "is now becoming more and more real every day".
"The UK is at the top of our list of places we’re looking at where we want to go in the next couple of years. That’s the timeline that the regulatory framework lays out as making that feasible and we’re eager to start working towards that,” he said.
Keen to nail down a date, I asked if a ‘couple’ meant within two years.
“Potentially yeah” was his answer.
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That’s based on regulation, and technology will need to back it up.
Compared to the wide, straight, grid-based roads in Texas, London is a labyrinth.
Dale Forwood, who drives a black cab in London, told me she has to be constantly alert for bikes jumping red lights, pedestrians walking out in front of her car and ever-changing roadworks.
She fears autonomous vehicles would be a dangerous gamble on our streets.
“Driverless cars are going to be a disaster. When it’s raining or foggy their sensors don’t work very well. I’ve heard when an emergency vehicle goes past they just stop. They don’t know how to navigate like we do, so you need a human to do that,” she said.
One company trying to overcome those challenges is Wayve, a London-based start-up that recently raised $1 billion of investment, including from Bill Gates.
“The technology that Wayve is making is AI that we put into the physical world which we call embedded AI,” Kaity Fischer, the company’s Vice President of Commercial, told me.
“So the way our technology learns is by ingesting all sorts of on road data, whether that be from vehicles driving on the road or from the UK driving code. What it does is it creates vehicle intelligence that can drive a vehicle in a fully automated fashion.”
To put it another way, rather than getting vehicles to remember and recreate programmed routes, it tries to make the system ‘think’ like a human.
Kaity says it’s safer as a result.
“The [Department for Transport] has cited that nearly 90% of accidents and incidents are caused by human error. Wayve’s AI intelligence is never groggy, it's never distracted, it's always focused on the road and we believe it's going to bring enhanced levels of safety and automation,” she said.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “While trials of automated vehicles are well underway, safety remains our priority which is why we’re working closely with other countries to ensure these new technologies are safe, while harnessing the potential of the technology to create jobs and boost growth.
"We continue to work with the industry on the development of trials and will provide further detail in due course."
The two-year target is an aspiration, based on potential changes in legislation.
It may sound ambitious at the moment but with technology moving far faster than London’s traffic, Uber’s driverless destination may be closer than you think.
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