

Auro Robotics (YC S15) Is Testing a Driverless Shuttle System - isalmon
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/13/auro-robotics-yc-s15-is-building-a-driverless-shuttle-system-for-college-campuses/

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JohnHammersley
Good luck! I know how hard a problem this is, as I was part of the team that
worked on the driverless taxis now operating at Heathrow airport[1] (and which
have safely carried over a million people since launch).

You might also find the company's library of research papers a useful
reference [2].

Looking forward to seeing your progress!

[1] [http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/](http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/)

[2] [http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/about-
us/library/papers/](http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/about-us/library/papers/)

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srinivas_reddy
Thanks for the reference. We did talk to one of the first employees of
ultraglobal once and learnt its limitations and the challenges it faced.
Autonomous vehicle technology is definitely complex but deployable for low
speed vehicles in controlled environments. The recent developments in the
autonomous Robotics space and a significant reduction in sensor prices make
this the best time for such a product.

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srinivas_reddy
Also the fact that ultrapods carried millions of passengers despite it's
environment being constrained to rails on either side, proves the point that
completely autonomous vehicles that can move freely around the campuses will
have a greater use case.

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mc32
And this is the beginning of the end of bus driving as a profession. Sure,
this is in well defined, short (and private) routes. First Santa Clara, then
Stanford shuttles, then airport shuttles, then Googlebus drivers. Enjoy the
raises while you can.

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bliti
They are developing platforms that will operate inside contained environments.
What you are referring to is very different from what they are doing. An
autonomous vehicle that operates on a public road faces much more challenges
than one that does so in a contained environment. While working on my own
autonomous car (yes, I bought a car for the sole reason to try and do this), I
realized that the simplest route would be to do as they did. It can operate in
a closed loop, similar to line following robots. Eerily similar to automated
trains in airports. Its a challenge to build a safe autonomous vehicle, a bit
less so in the way they are doing it. Not trying to diminish their efforts
though. I have first hand experience of how hard this simpler approach is.

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mc32
I grant you that. But this is the beginning.

One obvious question, why aren't more subways fully automated? It's not like
they can't implement remote control override for emergency situations... Is it
still a psychological issue (with riders)?

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atroyn
Because most subways run on legacy infrastructure that would be difficult to
upgrade/replace. RF repeaters for emergency remote control for example would
need to be installed, certified and thoroughly tested.

Given that drivers aren't a big cost centre for subway operations in
comparison to maintenance etc. the cost/benefit doesn't make sense.

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mc32
I think the pensions are a sizable part of their expenses. If they automate
their retired workforce age out and there is no endless retirement pool to
contribute to. So this would be a significant savings.

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brudgers
This is cool. Yet the primary efficiency over conventional shuttles appears to
be limited to lower labor costs. Unlike the taxi market, it does not appear to
reduce vehicle count or improve passenger experience via better service.

Better service in a regular route context comes mostly from dedicated right of
way and platforms. The classic example is Curitiba's bus system in lieu of a
subway system It could not afford. The real change for campus shuttle service
will be if automation leverages itself into dedicated shuttle rights of way as
a safety measure or direct commitment to improved service.

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Animats
It's certainly time to do this. But "Available for preorder?" That doesn't
work for B2B manufactured products. They need real funding.

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jit_ray_c
We do need real funding. The more we can make the sooner and better we can
make things. Having lot of modules and test sites we can easily parallelize
work of both testing at different sites and collecting more data and working
on improving more modules at the same time. So basically we can truly utilize
higher amount of funding

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roel_v
There will be an autonomous shuttle starting (testing) october 2015 in
Wageningen, the Netherlands. Production use expected May 2016. Big caveats
though: will drive only 25 km/h, won't operate at night or in bad weather.
It'll shuttle between Ede trainstation and the WUR campus.

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jit_ray_c
Fortunately we are starting at Bay area where bad weather is less frequent and
we can also operate on mild bad weather and have done lot of testing at night
(in fact that was our prime hours of testing). We have also worked in bright
sunny daylight in scorching heats and overcome issues with sensor noise in
both conditions, only hoping to make even smarter algorithms and deals with
more wider range of situations and we continue our pilots and paid
deployments.

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roel_v
When do you expect to have a ready-to-purchase product for sale? Do you target
US only at first? What will your product cost, order of magnitude?

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ee_scu
I'm a student at SCU and I'm excited to see these on campus; it's not a big
enough campus to merit having it's own shuttle system, but it should be a
perfect testbed for the platform.

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jit_ray_c
We will meet soon then :) .. hope you are exited to get autonomous rides.
University authorities are excited to deploy such technology both to stay
ahead and have cool inspiring tech in campus and also to help elderly people
like some professors and visitors (who regularly come to church), or anyone
who has trouble walking and they can even use it for logistics within campus.
When something becomes much cheaper in the industry use-case possibilities
explode. So lots of reasons even for a small campus and everyone is excited
about it.

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11thEarlOfMar
Good Luck Nalin!

