nuTonomy looks to beat Uber at its own game
Head of US robotics start-up says big players are not committed to driverless cars
In the increasingly crowded global race to put driverless cars on the road, a US start-up stood out from the pack last week after beating Uber to offer the first robo-taxi service to the public.
Karl Iagnemma, chief executive of robotics start-up nuTonomy, believes the field is less crowded than it appears.
While Uber, Google, Tesla and Volvo are all road-testing autonomous vehicles, the scale of the challenge means the future of self-driving cars will be dominated by a “small number” of technology providers, he says.
Mr Iagnemma, a robotics specialist who founded nuTonomy with fellow MIT scientist Emilio Frazzoli, says: “There’s a relatively small number of teams with a credible path towards putting robust software on the road”.
The start-up’s chief executive, who grew up in Detroit and was an undergraduate intern at General Motors, is sceptical about the big carmakers’ record in self-driving technology.
“All the technology going into self-driving cars is robotic technology,” he says. “It’s not automotive. That explains why some of the traditional automotive players didn’t develop this technology.”
Mr Iagnemma adds: “Right now we have a number of options for organic growth and partnership. Although it seems like it’s a crowded space with a lot of players, this technology is specialised and not every team working on this is going to come up with a solution.
The road tests nuTonomy is conducting are taking place in the One North district of Singapore, which is occupied mainly by research institutes and has the quietly industrious air of a university campus.
The start-up has given its driving software the discretion to choose between conflicting rules of the road, violating lower priority rules if necessary to ensure safety.
“If the car is faced with a situation where it doesn’t know what to do, it can at least stop and call for help,” Mr Iagnemma says.
One such occasion — when engineers intervened to override the autonomous controls — involved a food truck and a man dressed in a chicken suit as a promotional stunt.
The start-up, which raised $16m in a Series A funding round in May, was attracted to Singapore as a launch market because of strong government backing.
This month, Singapore’s transport regulator, the Land Transport Authority, shortlisted nuTonomy and Delphi, the vehicle technology provider, to conduct tests of robotic vehicles in the city-state.
Singapore authorities believe self-driving cars offer a comfortable means of transiting the “first and last mile” between public transit stations and a commuter’s home and office, curbing private car usage.
In April, Singapore rail operator SMRT announced a joint venture with Dutch company 2 Getthere Holding to market, supply and operate automated vehicles across Asia. These 24-person pods would likely be used within quieter environments such as hospital grounds, business parks or campuses to ferry commuters to the nearest public transit station. Singapore’s regulator is also exploring the use of self-driving buses.
“Other countries have an uneven regulatory landscape. The regulatory landscape in the US is developing. Singapore is going to present a smoother path to market than anywhere else in the world,” Mr Iagnemma says.
He adds that nuTonomy is searching for another city to conduct trials: “We’ve got a pool of cities under consideration. We don’t know where the next city will be.”
Asked whether he personally enjoys driving, Mr Iagnemma laughs and says: “I’m a bit indifferent. Everybody likes driving through scenic winding roads. It’s hard to find people who like sitting in traffic in cities.”