Walt Disney World plans to deploy driverless shuttles in Florida
Walt Disney World plans to deploy driverless shuttles in
Florida
By Russ Mitchell April 28, 2017 2:25 PM
Walt Disney World in Florida appears poised to launch the
highest-profile commercial deployment of driverless passenger vehicles to date,
testing a fleet of driverless shuttles that could cart passengers through
parking lots and around its theme parks.
According to sources with direct knowledge of Disney’s
plans, the company is in late-stage negotiation with at least two manufacturers
of autonomous shuttles – Local Motors, based in Phoenix, and Navya, based in
Paris. It’s unclear whether contracts would go to both or just one of the
companies.
The sources, who asked not be identified to avoid
offending Disney, said the company plans a pilot program later this year to
transport employees in the electric-drive robot vehicles. If that goes well,
they said, the shuttles would begin transporting park visitors sometime next
year.
Currently, there are no plans for driverless shuttles at
Disneyland in Anaheim, according to the sources. The reason is unclear, but
Florida puts few restrictions on driverless vehicle deployment, while
California is overhauling regulations that have been criticized by industry as
unnecessarily heavy handed.
Disney did not return emails and phone calls seeking
comment. Navya and Local Motors declined to discuss Disney.
A barrage of media coverage on driverless cars over the last
year or so has primed the public for their appearance on public roads. Although
vehicle manufacturers say individuals won’t be able to buy driverless cars for
several years, vehicles are being gradually introduced to the public in limited
areas.
Waymo, the driverless arm of Alphabet-Google, has begun
offering rides in driverless cars in Phoenix.
Last year, several driverless shuttle companies started
testing the vehicles with public passengers in business parks and college
campuses in Finland, Singapore, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas and other
locations.
Autonomous shuttles are bound to be “the first exposure
most people have to driverless technology,” said Ben Stinnet, chief operating
officer at Auro Robotics, a start-up in Santa Clara, Calif. The company, which
is not involved in the Disney deal, is testing small shuttles at Santa Clara
University.
Other shuttle start-ups include EasyMile of Toulouse,
France, and SB Drive of Tokyo.
Most of the vehicles are shaped like tall bricks on
wheels. With plenty of headroom, the shuttles typically can carry up to 12 to
15 passengers. Equipped with cameras, radar and laser sensors, they’re limited
in “geofenced” areas – zones where the environment is well-mapped and
understood by the vehicles’ artificial intelligence software and hardware.
Though the shuttles are capable of driving 25 mph or
more, their speed is usually limited in initial deployments to 5 to 10 mph.
“They should be boring,” said Alain Kornhauser, an
autonomous vehicle expert at Princeton University. “Riding in an elevator is
boring. It takes you where you want to go.”
Shuttles like those planned at Walt Disney World “are in
a sense going to demonstrate to the public that (robot vehicles) really work.”
Walt Disney World is comprised of several theme parks
covering vast territory near Orlando. Hundreds of buses, boats and parking lot
trams transport park guests and employees. There are also three monorails.
Some Disney watchers see driverless shuttles recapturing
the futuristic vision set when monorails were introduced at Disneyland in the
early 1960s and Walt Disney World in the early 1970s.
Driverless vehicles “would make transportation at Disney
World cool again,” columnist John Frost wrote on the Disney Blog in 2013.
No one’s sure how big the market for autonomous shuttles
might be. Driverless technology and app-based on-demand transportation are
expected to transform public transportation. But huge questions remain
unanswered. Will cities go driverless with their big buses? Or will those be
gradually replaced by smaller shuttles driving dynamic custom routes, based on
demand?
Kornhauser said transit officials are just beginning to
come to grips with such questions.
In the meantime, companies are out to grab a big piece of
whatever market does emerge.
Local Motors is building its Olli driverless shuttle on
3-D printers at a factory in National Harbor, Md. It has shuttles running in
Berlin and the Washington, D.C., area.
In January, the company demonstrated the Olli on the Las
Vegas Strip during the Consumer Electronics Show, and it plans a more permanent
deployment.
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