Singapore's autonomous vehicles are exciting for quite a few reasons

By THOMAS HARTWELL

While drivers in the U.S. are still waiting for autonomous vehicles to work out the bugs (hurry up Google), the daily travels of citizens of areas of Singapore are already being driven around by no one at all. Driverless pods are currently milling about school and business campuses and are going to be commonplace by the end of the year. 2getthere, the "sustainable travel company" of Asia has announced that, also by the end if the year, 24-passenger pods will be taking patrons from place to place. The driverless pods run by following a magnet track in the ground, much like a road you can't see. Singapore is testing lots of autonomous vehicles with lots of different technologies; for example, these golf carts as well. 

Autonomous vehicle development, like what is happening in Singapore is not only cool, it's a way to reduce emissions, avoid accidents, and more. Where Google's autonomous vehicles travel on the road just as any of our cars do, these pods follow a pre-determined track which can help to avoid other cars and can be monitored and regulated. We've seen some Google mishaps in the news a few times already, and even the development of "decision making tech" in those vehicles can be iffy -- leaving it up to a car to decide which obstacle to run into in the case of an unavoidable accident is a little scary to me.

The energy aspect of the Singapore pods is also exciting. With much concern in the U.S. revolving around climate change, burning of fossil fuels, alternative energy and carbon emissions, I think it would be smart of us to look into testing this kind of technology on college or hospital campuses at the very least. Even if these pods don't make it on to the main road, they're still a great way to get around smaller communities. On the topic of charging --since these vehicles are electric -- along with moving easily from stop to stop, the pods can "seamlessly" move from charging block to track to stop and back to charging block. The take-away here is basically that with as much interest as there is in autonomous vehicles in the U.S., is still seems we're being outpaced by other nations, and maybe we should take some notes.