Ford teams with MIT for ride-hailing shuttles (F)

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Ford is deploying electric vehicles on the campus of MIT with the help of the university’s Electric Shuttle Project, according to Fortune.

The automaker and the school hope to collect data from the buses to help predict demand for ride-hailing shuttles, and then route the vehicles to areas where and when they will be most needed. Ford did not provide a date for when the vehicles will be deployed.

The electric shuttles are believed to be small enough to navigate sidewalks on MIT’s campus and will be outfitted with cameras and LIDAR sensors. Normally cameras and LIDAR systems are deployed on self-driving cars to help them sense and avoid nearby obstacles.

Ford plans on using the data that the cameras and LIDAR sensors collect to understand pedestrian traffic patterns. That should help it predict where the shuttles will be needed most around campus. The automaker will also analyze the data to help it improve its self-driving technology.

Self-driving buses for ride-hailing purposes will become a major IoT use case in the coming years. Mercedes-Benz recently tested a self-driving bus in the Netherlands, and vehicle manufacturer Local Motors announced that it will begin testing a fully autonomous electric minibus this fall in Washington, DC. These developments indicate that autonomous public transportation will become a reality in some areas by the end of the decade.

John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, has compiled a detailed report on self-driving cars that examines the major strides automakers and tech companies have made to overcome the barriers currently preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the market. Further, the report examines global survey results showing where fully autonomous cars are highly desired.

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• Three barriers have been preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the road: 1) high technological component prices; 2) varying degrees of consumer trust in the technology; and 3) relatively nonexistent regulations. However, in the past six months, there have been many advances in overcoming these barriers.
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• Consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicle technology has increased in the past two years.
• California became the first US state to propose regulations. California's regulations stipulate that a fully autonomous car must have a driver behind the wheel at all times, discouraging Google's and Uber's idea of a driverless taxi system.

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