New York City finally gets its own self-propelled shuttle service

Autonomous vehicles finally come to the Big Apple. Optimus Ride, a Boston-based self-service launch, announced plans to deploy an autonomous shuttle service in New York City in the second quarter of 2019. The company also plans to offer tourists to residents of the Paradise Valley retirement community in Northern California.

To be sure, robot cars won't jockey for space in Times Square anytime soon. Optimus Ride's autonomous shuttle buses will run in closed loops on private roads in Brooklyn Navy Yard, a private, 300-acre World War II mill that is in the midst of a high-tech recovery. The shuttle service will be available to around 8,500 people working on Navy Yards various heavy and light manufacturing operations, as well as future passengers in New York's East River Ferry service, planning to open a new pier at Navy Yard in early 201[ads1]9.

Optimus Ride wanted not say how many vehicles it would distribute, nor give any specifications for the type of vehicle it uses. "The fleet of self-propelled vehicles on the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Paradise Valley properties will increase throughout the distribution period," an email spokesman said. "Optimus Ride utilizes Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) designed for operation in environments at 25 mph. Optimus Ride is agnostic vehicle and can integrate our self-propelled technologies into any type of vehicle."

Nevertheless, there is significant development, with thought The fact that New York is largely left out by the robot taxi boom in recent years. Almost two years ago, the New York State Legislature adopted a bill that approved demos and autonomous vehicle tests on public roads. But since then, the streets of New York have been without robots, as the operators flock to places with friendlier rules (like Arizona) or those more convenient to their headquarters (like California).

Optimus Ride, a MIT spinoff, bills the Navy Yard deployment as "the first commercial self-propelled car distribution in the state of New York." But there have been a handful of demonstrations of autonomous technology. Audi completed a six-mile demo around the state's capital in June 2017 after receiving approval from the DMV. Later that year, Cadillac performed a "hands-free" station from headquarters in New York City to New Jersey.

Since then, New York has been a ghost town for AV testing. Part of the reason may be the state's stringent requirements, which at all times include a state policy escort to be paid by the test company. In 2017, GM announced plans to test its self-propelled vehicles in Lower Manhattan, but these plans have since dried up with little explanation as to why.

And New York's elected officials have largely ignored the self-propelled phenomenon, instead focusing their attention on the poor state of the city's subway system. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio resisted the GM distribution at that time, and remains skeptical of the technology.

"If this pilot complies with the Insurance Act and other non-traffic laws and remains limited to the Brooklyn Navy Yard – which is private – then it can work," said Seth Stein, a spokesman for the mayor, in an email. "The mayor has expressed his strong opposition to testing a new technology on our busy streets." (A New York Gov. spokesman Andrew Cuomo did not respond to a comment request.)

Navy Yard and Paradise Valley, an 80-acre retirement community located in Fairfield, California, would be the Optimus Rides third and fourth public distributions, respectively. The company is also planning to run an autonomous taxi service at Halley Rise, a $ 1.4 billion development project in Reston, Virginia, to start later this year. Previously, Optimus Ride implemented a handful of robot cars near its home base in Boston's Seaport district.

These distributions recall similar services available from startup such as Voyage in retirement in California and Florida, or Drive.ai in Frisco, Texas: mostly low-speed autonomous vehicles in tightly controlled, geo-geographic areas with an operating team in constant communication with cars. These vehicles – small, usually electric, with capacity for no more than a dozen people – have spread across cities around the world. Experts consider them a good entry point for autonomous vehicle technology, while regulators like to keep vehicles in small, less populated areas.