An unmanned taxi with intelligent order distribution technology may appear in Moscow. Yandex.Taxi has begun negotiations with automakers. The head of PR projects for the service, Elina Staviskaya, told the site about this. Earlier, Uber launched the first unmanned taxis in the United States; the decision to introduce them in Moscow may be made based on the results of the experiment in the States, noted the company’s representative in Russia, Evgenia Shipova. Moscow authorities have expressed their readiness to cooperate with taxi services on this issue. The Moscow City Duma noted that the emergence of unmanned taxis will require changes to traffic rules and the organization of special dedicated lanes.
Yandex.Taxi is negotiating with automakers regarding an unmanned taxi and about starting testing this technology. We see huge potential in combining unmanned vehicles and intelligent order distribution technologies, taking into account the traffic situation and special wishes of users,” said Staviskaya.
Yandex has signed a cooperation agreement with KAMAZ PJSC to develop a semi-autonomous vehicle control system based on a set of artificial intelligence technologies: computer vision, machine learning, speech technologies. It is planned to develop a driver assistance system capable of keeping the car in the lane, initiating emergency braking, and monitoring the degree of driver fatigue.
“We have just signed an agreement, we are just starting to develop it,” explained Oleg Afanasyev, director of the KAMAZ public relations department.
The Uber taxi service has already begun using driverless cars in test mode in the American city of Pittsburgh. “The driverless taxi service in Pittsburgh is no different from a regular service. The only peculiarity is that at the time of testing there is a specialist in the car who provides control. We would like to test this first before using it on a full scale. There are a lot of user reviews about what they like , a lot of videos. There have been no hiccups or emergency situations at the moment,” said Uber official representative in Russia Evgenia Shipova.
She was unable to clarify when unmanned taxis might appear in the Russian capital. Uber will first look at the results of the Pittsburgh pilot, she said. “This is a very serious step; preparation for the test mode took place over 18 months. This is a project that requires a lot of preparation,” Shipova noted.
Moscow authorities have expressed their readiness to cooperate with taxi companies if they address the issue of unmanned vehicles. Deputy Head of the Department of Transport Dmitry Pronin said that he knows about the Uber experiment. “Of course, the potential for future changes is concentrated in this development. We will clearly look at this, monitor and analyze it. If they come up with a proposal, we will consider it and our capabilities,” Pronin noted.
Ford will launch mass production of self-driving cars that will be available to a wide range of consumers by 2025. In 2021, the car, which does not have a steering wheel and pedals, will be supplied to taxi services. Self-driving cars are being tested by Tesla and Google. The world's first driverless taxi in Singapore in August 2016 by nuTonomy. At the moment, the fleet consists of six cars. But by the end of the year their number may increase to twelve. And the ultimate goal is to replace all taxis with self-driving ones by 2018, which should overall reduce the number of cars on Singapore's congested roads. At the same time, the first driverless buses in Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The traffic police have already begun operating autonomous vehicles.
Staviskaya added that while there is no legislative framework for the use of unmanned vehicles, its emergence could accelerate the development of the market. According to the Chairman of the Legislation Commission of the Moscow City Duma, Alexander Semennikov, the introduction of unmanned taxis will require changes in legislation, but minimal ones.
“This is the future, now in many countries this topic is developing. Moscow is a city of the 21st century, and it willingly applies all technologies. Obviously, when unmanned vehicles appear, it is necessary to create dedicated lanes for them, where there is no heavy traffic, there is no need to change lanes, it is necessary just slow down in front of obstacles,” Semennikov said.
The head of the department of transport telematics and robotics at MADI, Vladimir Vlasov, agrees with Semennikov: Moscow needs to prepare for the advent of “drones” and change traffic regulations. “We can make dedicated lanes in the center of the road, plus telematics at the scoreboard level. We need to create an infrastructure that will allow driving in an unmanned vehicle,” says Vlasov.
According to him, first there will be rental cars in the capital; these could be city guides. “This will start from the central districts of the city, where there will be excursions to historical places. And then transportation using unmanned vehicles may appear,” the expert concluded.
Evgenia Kislaya, Anatoly Fedotov
This week, Yandex and the Moscow government signed an agreement on the development of unmanned vehicles. Testing of unmanned vehicles on the streets of Moscow and the test site began in February, and in June, a Yandex unmanned car covered 789 kilometers, reaching from Moscow to Kazan. “We are confident that in the next 12 years, unmanned technologies will change the urban transport system and erase the line between taxis, car sharing, personal and public transport,” the company’s press service said on this occasion.
The Village asked Moscow taxi drivers what they think about the prospects for their profession in connection with the development of driverless technologies and how soon human drivers will be replaced by robots.
Andrey Pugachev
I heard that Uber was testing a driverless car in America and that it seems that driverless Teslas are already driving in the UAE. And in Russia, an unmanned taxi under the control of a driver recently made an intercity trip.
I'm not sure I'll stay in a taxi as a driver for long. I’m also not sure that in five years in Russia, drones will replace living people - the human factor has a very strong influence on the road. Perhaps this will happen in 10–20 years.
Dmitry Osokin
I know only superficially that tests are being carried out at the race track and in the city, but I haven’t seen the drones myself yet. I don’t think that in five years everyone will switch to them. Drivers will be in trend for a long time.
The idea seems to be not bad: time does not stand still, and we need to keep up with it. I can’t say anything about safety, but I wouldn’t trust my life to a robot.
Michael
I know about the project. I read about drones on the Internet, but I haven’t seen them in person. I’m not afraid of losing my job, because I’m sure that a drone will never be able to replace a person behind the wheel. Examples are all other modes of transport. This is done more for the development of technological progress than for implementation in everyday life. We don't have ideal roads for computer algorithms to work on. In the same metro, everything has been automated and debugged for a long time, but the profession of a metro driver is still relevant. I don’t think there’s any need to tell you what kind of roads we have.
Alexey Petryaev
I saw the project. I think that for the prices that the Kyrgyz travel, even robots will not drive. And knowing our markings in Moscow, even professionals do not always know what to do when a car specially stops in a dedicated lane and it is impossible to go around it, since there is a camera and a continuous lane. I think the robot will go nuts from such scams of our government.
Well, I’m not afraid of losing my job, but, as Yandex says, I’m an entrepreneur (IP), I won’t fire myself.
The first unmanned taxi in Europe appeared in Tatarstan. This became possible thanks to an agreement on the development of unmanned vehicles in the republic between the Tatarstan government and the Yandex company. Read more about the new service in the report of Tatar-inform news agency.
Innopolis has become the first city in Europe where you can use a drone for everyday travel. Two unmanned Toyota Prius cars and five stops appeared in the city: a university, a stadium, a medical center, the Zion residential area and the Popov Technopark. For example, a resident of Innopolis can call a taxi to his home in the morning, take it to work in the technopark, and from there go to the gym.
You can use an unmanned taxi every day and absolutely free. However, to become a client of the “invisible driver”, city residents must agree to participate in testing. To date, 100 people have already expressed their desire.
The waiting time for a car depends on demand, but there is a little secret: to get to your destination faster, you can arrange a shared ride. Let's say, team up with your housemates and all go to work in a technology park together. The capacity of the unmanned taxi is three people.
The car follows traffic rules, allows pedestrians to pass, avoids obstacles and can apply emergency braking. Its work is supervised by a Yandex test engineer. He is also present in the cabin of the self-driving car when traveling, but sits in the passenger seat.
“Last year, Yandex began active testing of unmanned vehicles, and this summer, for the first time, our car drove in automatic mode almost 800 kilometers from Moscow to Kazan,” said Elena Bunina, General Director of Yandex in Russia. - For us, unmanned driving technologies are one of the key topics. We are confident that in the next few years they will find application in public transport, car sharing or, for example, taxis. This will make transportation cheaper, more accessible, and most importantly, safer.”
Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov was one of the first to test the first unmanned taxi in Innopolis and shared his impressions with journalists.
“In the next few years, driverless vehicles will become commonplace. Today in Innopolis it is available to everyone. We have found a legal form for this. Innopolis is the most modern city, and we need to live up to this name,” noted the President of the Republic of Tatarstan.
In addition, according to Rustam Minnikhanov, next year at the WorldSkills world championship in blue-collar professions, unmanned vehicles will be able to be used not only by residents of Innopolis, but also by Kazan residents, as well as guests of the Tatarstan capital. This issue has already been agreed upon with the management of Yandex.
“I am convinced that a driverless car is more reliable than a driver who has bought a license. I can drive a car professionally and am able to appreciate how smoothly and systematically everything works - this is the quality of the best driver. The way you turn and braking is very comfortable and reliable. I recommend taking the opportunity to ride in a self-driving car,” concluded the Tatarstan leader.
A journalist from the Tatar-inform news agency also decided to take a ride in an unmanned taxi. Getting into the car, the question arose: “How does the car understand that it’s time to move?” It turns out that this is still a function of the test engineer, who sits in the front passenger seat and controls the process.
Overall, our test drive took about ten minutes. During this time, we managed to see almost the entire IT city. In particular, we drove around an industrial park, passed the colorful houses of a kindergarten, and drove past residential buildings and a sports center. All this time, the car itself decided when to speed up and when to stop to let a pedestrian pass.
Thus, a visualization panel is installed in the car interior, on which you can see the route of the trip “through the eyes” of a drone. For example, fences on the board glow red and warn the car that it is forbidden to go there. Pedestrians are depicted as a green rectangle. “Seeing” such a signal, our drone slowed down and stopped to let the pedestrian pass. After the “rectangle” moved away, the car started moving again.
During the entire trip, the driverless Toyota never exceeded the speed limit, but it didn’t “plod” too slowly, moving at a speed of about 40 km/h. By the way, the sensations of a trip in a self-driving car are no different from a trip with a real and very careful driver.
Yandex specialists believe that in the near future many cities will probably be similar to the Skolkovo scientific and technological complex, which is located one and a half kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road. That’s why they decided to create Russia’s first test zone there, where an unmanned vehicle can be called through the Yandex.Taxi application: to understand how a drone will work in an environment that is “gradually becoming a standard for urban design.”
The driverless taxi will travel freely around the territory of Skolkovo: to call it, you need to open the Yandex.Taxi application, after which the service will determine the user’s location and, if he is in the territory of the science city, will offer a ride on a drone. Yandex reports that the robotaxi calling service is available only to Skolkovo residents, but later all guests of the innovation center will be able to use it.
To use the drone, you need to accept the terms of the electronic agreement to participate in testing driverless cars - and you also need to be over 18 years old. The cost of the trip will be calculated at the standard rate, and the waiting time for the car depends on demand. An unmanned taxi based on the Toyota Prius hybrid compact van is equipped with lidars, radars and other sensors, as well as a computer vision system that analyzes the environment in real time.
Inside the drone, in the passenger seat, there will always be a Yandex test engineer, monitoring the movement and ready to take control. Only a limited taxi coverage area is available in the application, and boarding is carried out only in certain places. A self-driving car follows traffic rules, detects and avoids obstacles, allows pedestrians to pass and, if necessary, brakes urgently.
Commercialization and innovation have also affected this transportation market. If you study it carefully, it turns out to be huge. On a global scale, the annual demand in dollar equivalent is more than 100 billion dollars. Of which the lion's share goes to pay the driving staff. In Singapore, for example, electric cars equipped with automatic control systems have been adapted for these purposes. Of course, as of 2017, all this is in test mode. But technologies are developing and being refined.
In Dubai, the city government launched an unmanned air taxi in test mode; in fact, the Ehang 180 model is flying there. These are heavy copters for transporting people up to 100 kg. You can see the detailed characteristics of the Ehang 180 by downloading a brochure with a detailed description of the device from our website.
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