The city-state of Singapore doesn’t seem to be too shy of new technology, not only has its postal service started testing deliveries by drone, it has also been confirmed that autonomous a.k.a self-driving public transport vehicles will enter testing before the end of next year. The announcement was made today by the Singapore Land Transport Authority, a government body that’s responsible for looking after Singapore’s mass transit facilities.
The city-state’s Land Transport Authority revealed through its Facebook page that it has received eight proposals from within and outside the country concerning the use of self-driving technology for the purpose of mass public transportation.
It will study those proposals and have the system ready for tests in the second half of 2016, tests will take place in one-north, a bustling business area of the city that’s home to many technological and research-related facilities.
Local institutions I2R, A*STAR and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology will jointly conduct these tests before the end of next year, Singapore hopes to one day deploy a network of demand-responsive shared vehicles that provide a new mobility system for within and outside the city.
This might very well be the first step that Singapore takes to properly embrace self-driving technology and hopefully it might pave the way for this technology to get the approval to work in road cars as well.
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