In Brief
Transportation authorities in Dubai just lately examined a pair of driverless transport pods coupled to one another. Capable of ferrying six passengers per pod, these autonomous automobiles are a part of Dubai's efforts to advertise futuristic transport tech.
Autonomous Transport Pods
Visiting Dubai can appear to be entering into the longer term. It’s house to man-made islands, the world’s first 3D printed workplace, and firefighters with jetpacks. Now town needs residents to commute in sci-fi fashion, too – just lately, town unveiled and examined two autonomous transport pods, every designed to ferry as much as six individuals.
At the tip of February, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) featured these two pods hooked up to one another different and working round one of many metropolis’s important streets. Built in Italy by the U.S.-based firm Next Future Transportation, the cube-shaped autonomous pods run on electrical energy, with a prime velocity of 80 okay/h (roughly 50 mph).
These pods are a part of town’s 2030 Dubai Future Accelerators program, with a aim of constructing 25 % of day by day transportation totally automated. In order to do that, the RTA will spend $410,00zero (1.5 million dirhams) for additional analysis and growth of the pods.
“The goal is to develop these two research vehicles,” Khaled al-Awadhi, Automated Collection Systems director on the RTA, advised Reuters. “These tests are aimed at developing the performance of these vehicles.”
Transporting the Future
The plan, in line with the RTA, might be to initially deploy the pods on pre-programmed routes. Eventually, they'd change into accessible utilizing a cellular app for house pickups, like a ride-hailing service.
Next Future’s autonomous transport pods are simply one of many newest transport applied sciences Dubai has been considering. City officers have been engaged on plenty of Hyperloop initiatives, together with constructing a community that connects main cities.
Meanwhile, Dubai’s different autonomous transportation efforts embody testing a vertical take-off and touchdown (VTOL) ride-hailing service, in addition to a driverless taxi service on land powered by Tesla Model S and X automobiles. Dubai additionally funded a startup working to excellent a know-how that might enable driverless automobiles to “communicate” with one another, and with good street infrastructure.
Dubai RTA authorities haven't given a precise date as to when Next’s autonomous dice pods will hit the roads. For now, officers have mentioned they purpose to iron out their plans for the pods by the tip of 2018 or by early 2019.
Disclaimer: The Dubai Future Foundation works in collaboration with Futurism and is considered one of our sponsors.