Singapore is looking to open one of its neighbourhoods to driverless car testing starting next year, with the aim of reducing congestion and remodelling itself into a city built around walking, cycling and public transit.
According to the MIT Technology Review, the tiny city state is looking to operate a “first- and last-mile connectivity” service, taking passengers to public transportation services such as trains, or sending them to their destination from the nearest transit end point.
“Singapore welcomes industry and academia to deploy automated vehicles for testing under real traffic conditions on public roads,” said director of the futures division of Singapore’s ministry of transport Lam Wee Shann.
Singapore has already run public trials earlier this year in the Chinese and Japanese gardens in Jurong Lake District, utilising driverless buggies, an online booking system and vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The service ran on two weekends, transporting 500 people over 400 km in total.
This follows several years of pilot tests through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), starting with two golf carts at the National University of Singapore (NUS). This year, the partnership added an autonomous Mitsubishi i-MIEV to its stable, while a Navia driverless bus has also been used as a shuffle at the Cleantech eco-industrial park as well as the Nanyang Technology University (NTU).
According to senior researcher at the MIT/Fraunhofer ambient mobility initiative Paolo Santi, simulations showed that twice as many autonomous cars can drive through an intersection, reducing congestion and greenhouse gas emissions caused by stop-and-go traffic. This would eliminate the need for traditional infrastructures like traffic lights, he said, adding that he hopes to carry out experiments in Singapore to see how pedestrians and bikes would affect these cars at intersections.
Some problems would need to be ironed out before driverless car sharing could become a viable service, however. “Current maps are not good enough for autonomous vehicles,” said TomTom’s senior global product manager Nhai Cao, noting that autonomous vehicles would require three-dimensional maps accurate to within 20 cm.
Lam, meanwhile, said that a large-scale availability of these vehicles could mean that car trips would increase. “An autonomous vehicle could add on a lot more road trips, and we can ill afford that,” he said.
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When can I se our Malaysia to be among the best in the world or at least in par with the tiny Singapore? It is not about races, religion, BN or the oppositions. We all have children and we want to feel proud as Malaysian and for our future generation to live prosperously and peacefully. We want to be proud of Buatan Malaysia. We not only want to see our national car to be among the top in the world but we want to see many more things to make us proud to be Malaysians and proud of Malaysia. All these stupid political games and bickering are not making us realising the hopes and wish of the silence majority. We have to stand in unity as 1 Malaysian and work towards the betterment of our country and Citizen. This country is falling apart if we never seriously want to realise the dream of all Malaysians.
Kiasu country and kiasi people. Why bother what they want to do.
We will never be on par or even close to Singapore’s development simply because we have people who are against inventions and innovations like Same Lorrr and his kind here. His kind will crush every effort Malaysians make before it sees the light.
msia also got autonomous golf cart for testing the driveless car system. UTM already did it in 2012 with KL city route model..but malaysia gov only fund for the research but not using it for the people..good move singapore.
Way to go neighbour…its the way forward to the future with public transport to reduce CO2 emissions and congestion in the city. Meanwhile here in Bolehland…proposal for tax free first vehicle ownership for youths…hooray more household debt.
They are not tackling the congestion within the city instead adding more vehicles onto the roads…kudos to BN.
Stop it with the ‘Bolehland’. Be part of the solution not the problem. We talked about big big things and yet we are so disrespectful. can’t even say our country’s name right
Hear Hear! Those who don’t know how to spell our country’s name right, respect our flag and national anthem should get out and get lost!
Well done SG. Meanwhile in Malaysia our last mile connectivity are poor maintained taxis and polluting busses. But yet in 5 years time we will declare ourselves a developed nation. Janji wawasan tercapai. Bangang!