SA in driver's seat for autonomous vehicles Friday, 10 February 2017

News article written by Corbett Communications. The statements made or opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Engineers Australia.

Stand aside Uber, there’s a new kid in town, well almost. Soon people will be able to hail a driverless vehicle through a smartphone app or via a public kiosk to take them where they want to go – without a human driver or even a road – and it’s all on the horizon in South Australia.

SA first staged an on-road autonomous vehicle trial in 2015 and is well on its way to being the Australian hub of a worldwide industry “expected to be worth $980 million by 2020”, according to South Australia’s Transport and Infrastructure Minister Stephen Mullighan.

RDM Group from the UK is one of the latest autonomous vehicle companies to establish itself in this country with its flagship ‘Pod Zero’, and like many of these enterprises it has headed straight for South Australia, with its Asia-Pacific HQ located in Flinders University’s Tonsley Innovation Hub. The company’s CEO David Keene said becoming an official partner of the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI) which already has 80 national and international partners, in 2016 was at the start of “a concerted push” in this country for autonomous vehicles.

CTO Simon Brewerton calls RDM’s particular type of autonomous vehicle a “last mile transport solution”, meaning there will be a fleet of the vehicles in a city or town as an on-demand, heavily utilised service that would be available instead of people driving their own vehicles in the area. One point of difference with the Pod Zero as opposed to other autonomous vehicle is that these will be able to go off-road - on the footpath, through shopping malls etc. as well as on roads.

Passengers type the destination into the app which is displayed on an iPad installed on the dashboard of the vehicle (known as a pod) that arrives, and are given a passcode to open the door of the vehicle. These autonomous vehicles will be able to drive on roads, footpaths, through malls and tunnels, given the right public or private infrastructure and permissions.

The electric-powered pod has a top speed of 24 km/h off-highway with an operational range of 100 km. RDM said it’s versatile and can be built as a two-, four-, six-, eight-seater or even more, and has “zero emissions”. It negotiates streets using a combination of six cameras, three lidar sensors and two radars. Because of its low speed, the pods are suitable to operate on pathways and sidewalks, making them ideally suited for airports, shopping centres and theme parks, unlike conventional autonomous cars.

Brewerton also revealed a windowless version of the Pod Zero that would run in tunnels “hidden” within new shopping centres etc. They will also be equipped with VR and passengers could watch movies or play games or as he said, “be in the movie or you could be in a 3D game”. The vehicle was showcased, at the 23rd World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems in Melbourne in October 2016, and will be spruiked at conferences and exhibitions throughout the APAC region this year.

This follows on from South Australia Government pledging $10 million for the Future Mobility Lab Fund in October 2016 for grants to boost local testing, and R&D of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies after laws earlier in the year were introduced to allow driverless car trials. RDM’s David Keen said Australia is committed to being “at the vanguard of driverless vehicles”.

Author: Desi Corbett

Image: Pod Zero. Source: RDM Group