Autonomous Vehicles Hit the Sidewalks

Meet the autonomous sidewalk scooter, the first autonomous vehicle to hit the sidewalks and not the streets. In what’s vastly a sea of driverless cars, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the National University of Singapore teamed up to deliver some sidewalk science: a fully autonomous scooter that can be operated on pedestrian walkways.

After sensor configuration and software were successfully trialed in test cars and golf carts, MIT decided to move forward with the same sensor config. and software in trials of their autonomous scooter, and it proved to be a success.

According to MIT, the new trials established that the researchers’ control algorithms could work outdoors as well as they worked indoors, opening up a whole new level of awesome. They started out just by testing in tighter spaces, until eventually, they ran the scooter down one of the tightest corridors in MIT.

The system to the autonomous scooter includes several layers of software:

• Low-Level Control Algorithms— These enable the scooter to immediately respond to environmental changes, like a pedestrian making a b-line across its path faster than the flash.
• Route-Planning Algorithms— These calculate and plan out the route that needs to be travelled.
• Localization Algorithms— The scooter uses these to determine its location on a map.
• Map-Building Algorithms— This is what actually makes up the map.
• Scheduling Algorithm— This allocates fleet resources.
• Online Booking System— The systems users would employ to schedule rides on the scooter.

But what’s the real use-case of something as pedestrian (pun-intended) as an autonomous sidewalk scooter? Mobility and automation, according to MIT. The whole system working in tandem as MIT envisions could, theoretically, automate someone’s entire journey, from point A to point B.

And while anyone who’s seen Wall-E could testify to the horror of a future where humans don’t ever move, MIT predicts a world where people can catch a ride for a journey as small as getting from your front door to your bus stop to a journey much larger, like traveling 10 city blocks. MIT also envisions a benefit to those with mobility-impairments and says that the automated scooter could be used in more practical applications, like shopping malls and amusement parks.

However MIT chooses to go about integrating their autonomous scooter into the world, the technology behind the tech itself is more than impressive, now let’s just hope we won’t have to start dodging autonomous scooters in addition to distracted texters. The sidewalks aren’t as safe as they used to be.

For ZBRELLA Technology Consulting, I’m Christopher Clark, goodnight and good luck.