Driverless cars will soon be available for public use in London, a first for the British capital that brings vehicles powered by artificial intelligence to one of the world’s most congested cities.
The launch marks the beginning of British-born Wayve’s global rollout of robotaxis, which will extend to more than 10 cities, including Tokyo later this year.
“We’re really excited to launch this imminently and get public riders into our (vehicles),” Kaity Fischer, Wayve’s vice president of operations, told CNN Monday.
Wayve has been testing its technology on the “complex” streets of London since 2018 and plans to launch to the public later this summer. The initial rollout would include “dozens, not hundreds” of cars, she said.
The launch in London comes as self-driving vehicles are being increasingly rolled out in major cities across the United States and elsewhere.
The sudden proliferation has heightened scrutiny of what once seemed a highly futuristic technology but is now a present-day reality.
Initially, Wayve rides will be supervised by licensed Uber drivers with specialized training, before fully driverless operations begin.
This approach would “prove safety” and “build trust” among the public, Fischer said. “It allows us to build a safety case… so that when we remove the drivers from the vehicles, we have a strong track record,” she added.
Fischer said there was no “strict” timeline for removing supervisors from the vehicles, stressing that safety was paramount.
A recent CNN investigation into Alphabet’s Waymo robotaxis in the United States uncovered serious safety-related incidents, including cars running red lights and driving into oncoming traffic.
But Fischer argued that autonomous vehicles make streets “safer.”
“The stats speak for themselves,” she said. Self-driving cars “are never drowsy, never distracted” and have the ability to see “to a much higher fidelity than humans,” she added.
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‘Embodied AI’
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and cloud computing have accelerated the development and rollout of Wayve’s technology, which falls under the umbrella of what is widely referred to as “Embodied AI” or AI on a physical system.
“Back when Wayve was founded (in 2017), nobody thought automotive would put AI on a car,” said Fischer. Now, more AV companies were adopting Wayve’s approach, she said, noting that wider public awareness of generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT, had also helped.
Unlike some of its competitors, Wayve’s hardware is integrated directly into vehicles at the manufacturing stage, rather than being retrofitted afterwards.
“Our technology equips vehicles with a ‘robot brain’ that can learn from and interact with real-world environments,” Wayve says on its website.
Fischer applauded the UK government’s clear legal approach to self-driving technology under the Automated Passenger Services framework. “The UK government has also really doubled down on investing in AI,” she added.
