That day in the future when you get inside a self-driving bus to get to work, you’ll assume that the bus is programmed to drive you there as efficiently and safely as possible. Software will have replaced the driver who does that today. Perhaps more importantly, software will have also replaced those managing scores of busses at a control centre. Robin North is building the latter technology that will control those fleets from the mothership.
Recent research in Lisbon, Portugal showed that shared, driverless fleets of cars could meet the city’s mobility needs with just 35% of the usual number of vehicles on the roads during peak hours.
For a full 24 hours on average, they city would only need 10% of existing cars on the road to meet its transportation needs, according to the 2015 study on “TaxiBots” by the International Transport Forum, a division of rich-country think tank the OECD.