Self-driving
cars — or more accurately self-driving pods — took to the road in a
city outside of London Tuesday in what organizers are calling the first
public test of driverless cars in the UK. To be sure, it was at
extremely low speeds in a sparsely trafficked area, but was still
celebrated as a milestone by Great Britain, which has lagged behind the
US in testing self-driving cars.
The autonomous Lutz Pathfinder Pod, developed by the Oxford Robotics Institute and a university spinout company Oxbotica,
navigated its way around a small area in the southern English town of
Milton Keynes at 5 mph, turning corners and stopping as pedestrians
crossed its path, according to Reuters. The test was overseen
by the government-sponsored Transport Systems Catapult, a non-profit
that funds innovation projects in the UK.
The
egg-shaped vehicle, with its purple trim, electric battery, and
spinning LIDAR sensors, looked more like one of Google’s self-driving
prototypes than any of the more traditional looking driverless cars that
are currently being tested in the US.
It was the first of several tests planned for the UK in the coming months, since the government gave the green light to autonomous vehicles trials on public roads last year. The Meridian shuttle
in the southern London borough of Greenwich has been testing its
vehicles, which look like elongated golf carts, on private roads for
over a year. Another project is run by Venturer and will be operating
out of Bristol. A spokesperson for Oxbotica said their vehicle was the
first to be tested in an “unsegregated public area.”
Much like the US government,
the UK has said it wants to take a "light touch, non-regulatory
approach" to trials of autonomous vehicles. The plan is to encourage
companies to put more self-driving cars on the roads by 2020, with the
goal of building an industry to serve a global market that’s worth £900
million ($1.1 trillion) by 2025.
For
now, the goal of weird-looking, driverless pods like the Lutz
Pathfinder Pod is to acclimate the public to the concept of self-driving
vehicles, organizers say. "If people can see that these vehicles are
capable of driving themselves they can gain trust in them,” Neil Fulton,
a program director at the Transport Systems Catapult told Reuters.
But
where it goes from there will be the true test. Organizers say they
want 40 driverless pods operating in Milton Keynes by next year.
Meanwhile, carmakers Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo are spearheading their
own driverless car projects in the UK, as they seek to head off
technology companies that are testing autonomous vehicles like Google and Uber.
