Autonomous Taxi Service Already Operating In South Korea

Autonomous or self-driving car technology is going to be a big part of our future, from tech companies to conventional car manufacturers, everybody wants a piece of this multi-billion dollar pie. It’s going to take some time though since there are still many issues that need to be resolved first before fully autonomous cars can take to the roads. A report out of South Korea reveals that there’s already an autonomous taxi service available to students on a university campus for about six months now.

The service is called Snuber and it’s accessed using a mobile app created by the Seoul National University, it’s limited to the 4,109 square meter campus and the car can easily be spotted from a mile away since it has a turret on the roof which houses the hardware that scans the road and environment to allow the car to drive itself.

So far the Snuber has been used to transport disabled students around the campus, even though it’s capable of driving on its own, there’s a human driver behind the wheel at all times to immediately take control should anything ever go wrong. Snuber has been operating on the campus for six months and has not met with any accidents.

Seo Seung-Woo, the director of the university’s Intelligent Vehicle IT Research Center says that fully autonomous cars will take to the roads by 2020, and that door-to-door pickup services powered by self-driving cars will arrive by 2030.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Transportation
Tags: Self-Driving Cars