The future of the automotive industry not only involves electric cars, but also cars with no drivers.
Most research and developments concerning driverless cars have the ultimate goal of creating a fully autonomous driving. Tesla for example, is a well-known car manufacturer that works to make this technology happens. The car company with Elon Musk at the helm, has made a name for itself with its self-driving capability on its cars.
Tesla cars are indeed equipped with various sensors, capable of a fully driverless experience. But for it to be fully autonomous, law is yet to allow the company' cars to hit the road.
AI-powered vehicles are not yet allowed to roam free, without any human inside it that can step it in case things go wrong.
But if there is someone behind the wheel, even when that person is not inside the car, is allowed.
A regulation in Europe is permitting that, is this is why for the first there, a car with no human inside it is roaming in public roads.
The feat was accomplished by Vay, a German startup.
In a press release, the company said that i uses an approach called “teledriving,” in which the human driver is sitting behind a steering wheel, but not inside the car.
The driver is literally making the car a remote-controlled car.
But instead of using radio communications to control the car, the driver uses the internet to connect with the car, allowing the car to roam driverless from kilometers away.
The driver, which is the operator of the car, or the pilot ("teledriver"), uses a steering wheel, pedals, and monitors.
Simultaneously, the teledriver also receives audio feedback from road traffic sounds via microphones installed in the cars.
The overall system resembles a driving/racing simulator for video games more than it is a radio-controlled car.
Vay makes this possible, thanks to the redundant mobile networks that provide the data transmission.
But since spotty connection does happen from time to time, and from place to place, Vay has designed the system to automatically hit the brakes in case it fails to connect with the driver.
Vay started trialing the car without safety drivers after receiving an exemption permit from Harmburg, issued by the Authority for Transport and Mobility Change of the City of Hamburg (BVM).
Initially, the car was set loose alone without a driver on only predefined routes in the city.
"As a leading teledriving company, we have been driving remotely-controlled electric cars on public roads in Berlin and Hamburg for more than three years,” said Vay CEO and co-founder Thomas von der Ohe said in a statement, following the success of its first test-drive.
Vay plans to provide the technology as a door-to-door mobility service, where cars will be teledriven users' location, where users will take over the wheel after that, at which point the teledriver will take over again.
Vay also wants to provide teledriving experience to users, while they sit back.
Vay wants its services to compete with car-sharing and ride-hailing providers.
"With the exemption permit received in December 2022, we were now able to successfully drive the first car without a safety driver on a public road."
According to Anjes Tjarks, Hamburg’s Senator for Transport and Mobility Transition, he is expecting future benefits of this technology.
"Vay creates such added value with its teledrive service: no need to search for a parking space, emission-free, digitally bookable, and as a convenient service, for example for the ‘last mile’ from the bus or train station to your own front door," he said.
