Posted on 09/05/2015 3:45:47 PM PDT by nickcarraway
While rushing from class to class this fall, Santa Clara University students might soon be able to hitch a ride on a golf cart that -- without the benefit of a driver -- will traverse the palm-tree-lined campus.
No, the shuttle won't be driven by a poltergeist. Sunnyvale-based startup Auro Robotics has chosen the university as the location to test its new vehicle for three months.
The shuttle, operated by an onboard computer, has laser cameras that will have a 360-degree view of the campus and can detect pedestrians within 200 meters to avoid hitting them. People will be able to board the vehicle by waving their hands in front of it to make it come to a halt.
Many Bay Area residents have caught glimpses of Google's famed driverless cars on open roads. Auro's shuttle is different -- it's intended to move people on private paths and closed roadways.
During the test period, the electric shuttle will travel at about 10 miles per hour and operate in all weather conditions.
"When more people are comfortable with the idea of being driven autonomously, we can increase the speed," said Nalin Gupta, Auro's CEO.
The shuttle can seat up to four passengers and -- at least for the three months of the test -- a "safety engineer," who will sit in the front of vehicle. The shuttle will operate on a set path, starting at the intersection of Palm Drive and Sherman Street. It will head west on Palm and then go up and down Alviso Street from Franklin Street to Santa Clara Street, before returning to Palm and Sherman. The walkways are open only to pedestrian foot traffic and campus vehicles.
"It's a monorail without a rail," said Chris Shay, Santa Clara's assistant vice president for university operations.
Students, faculty, staff and visitors won't be able to ride on the shuttle for the first month of the pilot, but university officials say they plan to eventually allow them to hop on board. Details will be announced after the pilot begins on Sept. 21, when fall quarter classes start.
Auro has been testing the shuttle on campus since early August in preparation for the pilot. The company eventually wants to market the shuttle to retirement communities, resorts, airports and large corporate campuses.
Santa Clara might seem like an odd place to test out a shuttle, since it takes only about 10 minutes to get from one side of campus to the other. The campus is so compact that most students don't even use bikes to travel around campus. Most simply walk or skateboard.
Still, Shay said, the shuttle will be useful to transport people with disabilities, injured athletes and elderly faculty, staff and visitors.
"We have a significant number of visitors who come to the mission church for masses, and many of them are elderly," he said.
Several SCU students interviewed had mixed feelings about the experiment.
"I don't think our campus is so large that it needs a shuttle service," said junior Afreen Hasan, a communications major. "However, I think that it has the potential to be a useful resource for people who need assistance or are short on time."
Although the shuttles will allow Santa Clara to avoid paying for the cost of a driver, Shay said he is most excited about having the company and the university community use the campus as a "living laboratory."
The pilot program has already spawned educational opportunities for students. Christopher Kitts, associate professor of mechanical engineering, will now run a free seminar this fall to teach 30 to 50 students, staff and faculty members about driverless-car technology.
"Seeing the development of the project right there in front of you that is happening right now has a tremendous impact on the education of young people," said Godfrey Mungal, dean of the School of Engineering.
The pilot will be used to collect data and allow the startup to refine its product -- for example, ensuring that the vehicle can detect a leash when it encounters someone walking their dog, preventing the shuttle from getting entangled in the leash, Gupta said.
Some experts, however, aren't convinced that a driverless vehicle belongs on the pedestrian walkways of a college campus.
Don Norman, director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego and author of "The Design of Everyday Things," said a driverless shuttle would be much more feasible if it could predict the movements of pedestrians, since they often change course.
Norman is skeptical that the driverless-vehicle technology has caught up to the vision. And he argued that having a safety engineer onboard won't ensure the safety of passengers or people walking on campus because the engineer would only have seconds to react to a hazard if the driverless shuttle were to malfunction.
Driverless shuttles also have difficulty differentiating between an actual hazard, like a pedestrian or a metal pole, and objects that aren't hazards, like a fast-food wrapper or newspaper, Norman said.
SCU officials remain optimistic, however. And they're aiming to eventually have five shuttles running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that people can summon with an iPhone application, Shay said.
Steven Shladover, program manager for mobility at the University of California PATH program, which conducts transportation research, thinks the pilot's goals are a bit too ambitious.
"I would be surprised if they would be able to get rid of the (safety engineer) after three months," he said. "When it's out there in the public, people will mess around with the vehicle and get in its way. People will try to trick it and take advantage of it. It will get stuck, and somebody will have to rescue it."
In other words, a bunch of bored school kids can disrupt your ride, by waving their hands in front of it, causing the vehicle to stop. No thank you. I also note that the human rider in the photo hasn’t bothered to use a seat belt, or even a shoulder strap. Not too smart.
This makes perfect sense to go along with their teacher less classes.
What could possibly go wrong?
I need to work on a way to avoid double posting.
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