Autonomous car plans accelerate in Singapore Wednesday, 03 August 2016

Singapore is paving the way for the introduction of autonomous cars with announcements this week of a centre of excellence for autonomous vehicles and partnerships with Delphi Automotive Systems and nuTonomy to test autonomous taxi services in the city.

The Centre of Excellence for Testing & Research of AVs – NTU (CETRAN) was established by the Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA), Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and developer JTC. It will allow self driving vehicles (SDVs) to be integrated with existing road traffic and will feature a 1.8 ha test circuit to provide a simulated road environment for the testing of SDVs prior to their deployment on public roads.

“Although many countries and cities are testing self-driving vehicles, we have yet to see international standards and regulations suitable for large-scale deployment of SDVs," said Singapore Minister of State for Transport Josephine Teo.

"The launch of CETRAN and the Test Circuit will put Singapore at the global forefront to develop such standards, to safely integrate SDVs into our transport system. It’s also a significant step towards realising our vision of SDVs being used for first- and last-mile connectivity in our towns.”

The LTA also announced that British-based Delphi Automotive Systems and nuTonomy from Singapore had been selected to trial autonomous mobility-on-demand concepts. These separate trials are envisaged to comprise a fleet of SDVs which commuters will be able to summon using their smartphones, and be shuttled from point to point, for example, from their doorsteps to the train stations.

“LTA has been facilitating self-driving vehicle trials with single-vehicle prototypes in one-north since 2014," said LTA Chief Executive Chew Men Leong.

"We are excited about the role that fleets of shared SDVs can play in our transport system and are pleased to collaborate with Delphi Automotive Systems and nuTonomy to test and develop meaningful point-to-point mobility solutions that would benefit commuters. If successful, we will be able to deploy these services in various towns to serve commuters, bringing us another step closer to achieving our car-lite vision.”

nuTonomy has been conducting on-road testing with a Mitsubishi i-MiEV vehicle in one-north, a high-tech business park in the Queenstown area of the city. It is currently working to launch an autonomous mobility-on-demand service with a fleet of vehicles in Singapore in 2018.

"This innovative collaboration with LTA will accelerate the pace of change we are bringing to the fundamentals of human transportation by enhancing our ability to deploy a fleet of self-driving vehicles to serve the people of Singapore,” said nuTonomy CEO Karl Iagnemma.

Delphi said its solution is vehicle agnostic and can be applied in passenger cars, buses, commercial vehicles, purpose-built mobility pods and electric vehicles. Its pilot program will last for three years with plans to transition into an operational service by 2022. The company plans to introduce other pilots at locations in North America and Europe in the future.

[Transport Minister Josephine Teo (right) with NTU's Professor Lam Khin Yong and Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar at the launch of CETRAN. Photo: NTU]

Transport/Infrastructure will be a major topic of discussion at the Australian Engineering Conference 2016 in Brisbane on November 23-25.