Since the end of August Uber start of testing There are driverless taxis on the streets of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). The steering wheel rotates under electronic control, and the robotic car independently moves along public streets using data from sensors. Let's figure out how drones work and what allows them to recognize traffic signals, avoid obstacles and move along a given route.

Self-driving taxi service started working in Pittsburgh in test mode. To become a participant in the program, you need to receive a special invitation. As soon as the drone approaches the passenger, you will need to press a button on the tablet screen and confirm that you are ready to travel.

Uber cars are not fully autonomous. Although the steering wheel turns without the driver's participation, and the car independently navigates in space, there are two engineers in the cabin. One performs functions that are not yet available to a robotic vehicle. These include changing lanes, avoiding obstacles, and dealing with unexpected situations. The second engineer keeps a diary of the trip. In the future, these specialists should be replaced by a remote communication center.

For its fleet of robocars, Uber has modified hybrid models Ford Fusion. Like Google cars, lidars are installed on the roof of the cars. With their help, drones create a 3D map of their surroundings. The color camera adds color to the 3D map - this is how the car is able to distinguish traffic lights.

Lidar modules are also installed in the front, rear and sides of the vehicle. They recognize obstacles in blind spots.

Additionally, along the perimeter of the roof there is a row of 20 mini-cameras that recognize pedestrians and cars that begin to slow down, as well as other obstacles in the path of a self-driving taxi. One of the cameras is hidden in the radiator grille.

An antenna and radars installed on the roof allow the Uber robotic car to navigate in space using GPS.

Equipment standards for autonomous taxis have not yet been precisely formulated. In July, it terminated its contract with the Israeli supplier of stereoscopic vision systems Mobileye. Elon Musk's company intends to produce the necessary equipment itself. Later it became known that the companies did not see eye to eye on security issues. According to a hacker and startup founder Comma.ai by George Hotz, Mobileye was simply afraid of innovation. Relations became strained just after a fatal accident in which Tesla's autopilot system was involved.

Later Elon Musk's company presented updated version of Autopilot 8.0. Now the system will collect information, for the most part, using radar. All Tesla electric vehicles produced after October 2014 are equipped with them. Until that moment, the radars had auxiliary functions, but after the update they will become the main source of data. The company claims that now the car will react correctly even if a UFO suddenly lands on the road in front of it.

Tesla is not the only company whose driverless technology has been tested during an accident. Google Robomobile collided with a bus, because he “expected” him to give way. As a result, the drone damaged the front wing, wheel and one of the sensors.

Despite the imperfections of robotic cars, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick believes their time has come. He is convinced that if Uber had not launched a self-driving taxi service, it would have been surpassed by its competitors one way or another. Therefore, the opening of a service for unmanned passenger carriers for Uber was inevitable.

“At first glance, self-driving cars may seem to put drivers out of work, but in fact, they can create even more jobs,” says the head of Uber. – Let us at least remember the appearance of ATMs - many then predicted the disappearance of bank tellers. But in reality, automation has reduced bank costs and allowed them to open new branches, attracting more employees. even more employees. Self-driving Uber taxis will be on the roads 24 hours a day, so they will require many more people to operate them than today.”

The Yandex company launched a test service for an unmanned taxi in the city of Innopolis in Tatarstan. City residents can call one of two cars via a Telegram bot and navigate between five drop-off and pick-up points. During trips, a company engineer will be present in the front passenger seat, according to the Yandex blog.

Most of the major developers of self-driving cars, for example, Waymo and Uber, initially intend to use them as cars for taxi services. This is largely due to the fact that, as a rule, self-driving cars are equipped with several expensive lidars, as well as powerful computing modules for real-time data processing, which is why at the initial stage of development of self-driving cars they will be too expensive for personal ownership.

Yandex, which launched its driverless car in May 2017, also launched a test service for a driverless taxi. So far, two company cars based on the Toyota Prius are participating in testing. City residents who have registered for the testing program can call a car via a Telegram bot at one of five points designated for disembarking and picking up passengers. Moreover, during the pilot project all trips will be free.

Unmanned taxi passenger pick-up and drop-off zones

Three rear seats of the car are available for passengers - during all trips there will be a company engineer in the front passenger seat, monitoring the normal operation of the autopilot, and the company decided to leave the driver's seat empty.

The company announced that a pilot project in Innopolis was launched as part of an agreement on the development of unmanned vehicles in Tatarstan, signed with the government of the republic.

Previously, Yandex had already tested its self-driving cars on public roads in Moscow, and then one of them tested a trip from Moscow to Kazan, during which 99 percent of the route was covered in autopilot mode.

Self-driving taxi services are actively developing in the United States. For example, in 2017, Waymo, which became a continuation of the self-driving car project at Google, a closed version of the self-driving taxi service, in which passengers are volunteers who do not work for the company. And at the end of 2018, Waymo plans to launch a publicly accessible service in Arizona and already has an agreement to supply 62 thousand cars for this. In addition, Drive.ai recently launched a self-driving taxi service in the state of Texas.

Grigory Kopiev

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 ride a drone for free

You can use an unmanned taxi every day and absolutely free. However, in order 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.”

“A drone is more reliable than a driver with a purchased license”

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.

Test drive a car with an invisible driver

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 in order 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 feeling of driving a driverless car is no different from driving 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.

A lot has been said lately about a certain service. which will exist without the presence of the human factor, i.e. The technological progress that everyone has been dreaming about for so long will be fully utilized)))

I don’t think that our generation will experience all this to the fullest. Probably only when the gray heads of our grandchildren are firmly in place, only then will people make full use of these projects, which are only just emerging today.

Naturally, people think about how to quickly implement everything in life, and even already announce their achievements in all kinds of media , but let's face it and evaluate everything in today's reality.
The consumer, infrastructure, producer organizations, organizations exercising control over these projects - the entire chain today is not ready to provide a quality service to the population in this part of the discussion, as well as to use it with full responsibility.

If we consider the use of these projects geographically, then we can clearly see the failure of their existence even in such a metropolis as Moscow.

I’ll probably start with the fact that this robotic carriage will move sluggishly along the roads of the capital, at a slow speed, which will infuriate the majority of passengers who will not want to use this unit again.

The second point lies in the route. And it will need to be constantly updated in the same user application. After all, the computer needs to know where to take the passenger, and until it has the right address, it won’t move. Considering the current abilities of most passengers, they don’t even look at the address, sometimes they don’t even look where the location system found them in the first place. Not to mention when, already on the way, it is necessary to suddenly go back to a completely different place, due to changed circumstances.

The third point is the possibility of a rather inaccurate delivery of the car to the address. And if today there are a lot of negative reviews about the fact that the driver was not at the entrance, then you will almost always have to walk to this robotic cart from your address. Because no matter what the navigation device in this carriage is, in most cases the path is not indicated correctly when going directly to the house.
Moreover, the robot will not approach some people at all, because... Until now, even in Moscow, not all buildings are registered in maps on electronic resources, or are registered with a sufficient delay. This means that there is no address and then you will definitely have to enter the one located nearby.

Inability to call in extreme circumstances, for example, you need to dial the concierge at the barrier intercom. Can electronic hardware do this? Hardly.

The question is also interesting: what will the passenger do if suddenly there is a failure in the navigation system, or software, or something else?
Everyone probably remembers those same jammers around the Moscow Kremlin that transferred all routes towards Vnukovo airport. Just imagine, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, and the miracle unit turns around and, without saying a word to you, dusts off towards the Kyiv highway)))
Of course, I understand that people have already found a way to cope with this disgrace in navigation, but these are people...and machines?
How will you cope with software failures when a carriage without a driver suddenly stops in the middle lane of the Moscow Ring Road? Well, what an option!!!

Again, the mentality of many Russians, and the behavior of third-party citizens. After all, in most cases it also leaves much to be desired, or do you disagree?
Well, the baby will trample on someone’s seat, then this carriage will come to you. And you have to go, but you have no desire to sit on a dirty seat. And what if a night reveler suddenly accidentally empties his stomach after a copious libation of various kinds of strong drinks? How is the next consumer? I won’t even talk about those who want to unscrew something, but this is practically in the blood of many.
Similar cases in a nearby car rental service, car sharing, have already happened, as an indicator of human abilities.

And I haven’t even talked about the regions yet!!! Where the drone is just fantastic.
Just look at the roads there, not to mention some other wonders of civilization.

From everything written above, it seems to me that unmanned taxis will not soon become an integral part of our lives.

And certainly our generation, and certainly the generation following us, some of whose representatives repeatedly comment on the uselessness of a person driving a car in the near future, will not be able to fully take advantage of this service in their lives.
Perhaps only in a few years... as an excursion around the center of the capital. Where the speed of the car itself is low due to a bunch of pedestrian crossings, most of which have limited visibility for the driver. Because the streets and alleys are not wide. Due to the constant congestion of cars, etc.
Waddle, not in a hurry to ride anywhere.
However, when ordering, you will have to be careful about your location on the map of the area in your electronic gadget. After all, the center is abundantly stuffed with WI-FI access points, which can completely shift the coordinates of the location to the side and then the hardware robot will arrive in the wrong place.

Well, you can practice, feel like you’re in the cockpit of an unmanned taxi in such a hybrid. Where the driver is simply separated from the passenger and a complete feeling is created that you are being driven by a true robot)))

Let's live in the real world. We are still very far from all this, and in our period of life we ​​will not see fully what is being created in projects today.

Good luck everyone!