Unmanned Systems Technology 010 | nuTonomy driverless taxi | Embedded computing | HFE International marine powertrain | Space vehicles | Performance monitoring | Commercial UAV Show Asia report

26 W hile Singapore is blessed in many ways, traffic congestion and environmental degradation are perennial concerns for the city’s 5.5 million or so people who live and work in a space of little more than 700 sq km. So, in 2009, its government elected to give SG$50 million to the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre towards creating potential solutions for future mobility. While much of the initial focus was on transit sectors such as trains, MIT professor and eventual co-founder of nuTonomy Emilio Frazzoli saw that driverless vehicles merited further investigation. nuTonomy’s COO Doug Parker says, “Emilio headed the initial research, which showed we could actually reduce the number of private cars on the road by at least two-thirds by shifting from owner- operated cars to an autonomous vehicle fleet. And that’s what got the Singapore government excited.” That excitement spread when, on Rory Jackson charts the development of this autonomous cab, the first in the world to start fleet trials in public Hailing the future The nuTonomy taxi is based on a Renault Zoe, with upgrades to power and computer processors October/November 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology