Driverless vehicles hit the road in trials around Singapore

From as early as December, visitors to Gardens by the Bay will be able to hop on to Auto Rider driverless shuttles that will take them around the sprawling grounds. The vehicles, which have been tested in Switzerland, are making their Asian debut here as part of a multi-agency autonomous vehicle trial, reported The Straits Times.

Yesterday, the Transport Ministry signed two Memoranda of Understanding (MOU). One MOU is with port operator PSA to jointly develop autonomous truck platooning technology for cargo transport between terminals, the other with Sentosa Development Corp and ST Engineering to test self-driving shuttles across Sentosa.

Meanwhile, A*Star's Institute for Infocomm Research and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have started driverless trials in one-north, while the Nanyang Technological University has been doing the same on its campus.

Permanent Secretary for Transport Pang Kin Keong said yesterday, "Self-driving vehicles can radically transform land transportation in Singapore to address our two key constraints - land and manpower. The trials will help us shape the mobility concepts which can meet Singapore's needs, and also gain valuable insights into how we can design our towns of the future to take advantage of this technology."

Unlike autonomous vehicle trials elsewhere, Singapore is focusing on applying the technology to public buses, freight carriers, autonomous taxis and utility operations such as road sweepers. A*Star Executive Director Lee Shiang Long said, "I'm quite confident that Singapore will be the first city to implement this new technology. This is because unlike trials in other countries, which are left pretty much to the private sector, the Government is behind the efforts here."

Elsewhere, the Land Transport Authority has received responses from eight firms to a request for information to carry out its own trial in one-north. It will evaluate the proposals, and expects to begin trials by the second half of next year.