Are robot taxis really the future?

In theory it should have been here by now. According to all the predictions, you should have been able, by now, to put your details into an app, step out to the kerb, and into a waiting robotic taxi which would swish you, without a human driver, off to your destination. Having dropped you off, it could then have whizzed off, silently and electrically, either to pick up another passenger, or to go and recharge its batteries, all without human supervision.

Clearly, it hasn't happened. Uber, the ride-hailing company, had been in the vanguard of such efforts, and had been working on fully-autonomous robo-cabs, until a tragic accident in which one such prototype struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Since then things have become a little quieter on the robo-taxi front.

Development is continuing, though. Last year, Renault set up the 'Paris-Saclay Autnomous Lab' in which a fleet of prototype self-driving Zoe electric cars were made available to the students and staff of the Paris-Saclay university on its main campus. While the cars did have a 'safety officer' on board to nab back control in the event of a problem, the rest of the cabin was partitioned off, so that "passengers get a glimpse of the future of autonomous mobility – with neither operator nor driver on board".

It seemed to go down well. One student responded to the service by saying: “The car is autonomous but also electric, so more pleasant for the inhabitants of the district because it is silent and more ecological. I am a little nervous about getting into a vehicle that I won’t have control of, but also have a lot of excitement about the novelty of the experience.”

Jaguar Land Rover recently showed off its ‘Vector’ – an electric, self-driving pod, whose styling can be subtly altered to make it look more like a Jag or a Range Rover, depending on need.

‘Megatrends’

Dr Tim Leverton, project director said: “The megatrends of urbanisation and digitalisation make connected urban mobility systems necessary and inevitable. Shared and private vehicles will share spaces with, and be connected to, public transit networks, so you can travel on demand and autonomously. That is a complex task, best achieved by working together with partners across the spectrum of vehicles, infrastructure and the digital world. With the technology and engineering power of Jaguar Land Rover, we can provide a unique opportunity for innovators to develop highly-functional urban mobility services, seamlessly integrated into everyday life.

“Future urban travel will be a composite of owned and shared vehicles, access to ride hailing and on-demand services as well as public transport. Our vision shows the vehicle as a flexible part of the urban mobility network that can be adapted for different purposes.”

So, it’s a slam-dunk, right? Robo cars are the future? Well … while it may seem that way, getting the tech from the lab to a functioning system in the real world has proven rather more tricky.

Apart form the Uber incident, Volvo decided to pull the plug on a much-publicised public ‘beta’ test of autonomous cars in Sweden when it realised that the tech just wasn’t ready. A report by MIT suggested that autonomous taxis could struggle to make back the huge investments needed in the technology to create them. Others, such as the Canada-based Victoria Transport Policy Institute, fear that swarms of autonomous cars taking to already-crowded city streets could actually make congestion much, much worse. “Congestion is a non-linear function, so as a road approaches its maximum capacity, small changes in traffic volumes can cause proportionately larger changes in congestion delays” said the institute in a report.

So while the technology is unquestionably clever, and the potential benefits clear, it turns out that creating robotic taxis is actually a lot harder than anyone thought.