Self-driving cars: Watch a test-drive of an autonomous vehicle
Buckle up for a ride — and the latest info — on self-driving cars. For the Detroit Three automakers, much of the technology is already in place.
- May Mobility, a self-driving startup in Ann Arbor, offered the author her first glimpse of true self-driving vehicles in Michigan.
- There is no vehicle currently for sale that are legally considered self-driving.
“We’re going to drive alongside other humans?” I say in a voice a few octaves higher than normal.
“Oh yeah,” Edwin Olson, CEO and founder of autonomous shuttle company May Mobility, tells me from the middle row of a Toyota Sienna.
Past him, I can see the minivan’s steering wheel rolling left and right, partially obscured by the empty driver’s seat. The vehicle directs itself onto a busy road.
“Oh wow.”
“This is a real autonomous car,” Olson says, sounding surprised at my surprise. After all, I had just interviewed him for over an hour at May Mobility’s corporate offices and watched him summon the driverless vehicle to the curb. Getting on the road was the plan.
“Uh, yeah,” I squeak back.
I’m sitting in the back seat next to Frank Renwick, May Mobility’s vice president of marketing and communications. Next to the CEO is a Free Press videographer who peppers him with questions and adjusts his camera equipment. The front row is empty.
“We’re going to see a bunch of different environments here in Ann Arbor, starting with this light industrial area, and then moving into more higher-traffic residential areas ― arterial roads ― so we get a good mix,” Olson tells us as the captain of our captainless ship.
May Mobility operated four vehicles, all donated from Toyota Motor Co., in Detroit as part of its free service, though that program ended in June. On Sept. 10, May Mobility launched an autonomous vehicle pilot program in Atlanta with Lyft, marking the first public autonomous vehicle deployment.
The company relies on automakers to determine the underlying vehicle design features that can support the technology it adds while following state and national regulations.
While the vehicles that circulated in Detroit had safety drivers, the ones May Mobility deploys for testing and invitation-only rides like mine do not.
My breathing speeds up as he explains what an unprotected turn as our vehicle attempts one — an instance where a self-driving vehicle approaches a road with cross-traffic without a clear right-of-way.
“Unprotected turns are sort of the canonical autonomous vehicle ‘hard problem’ because that’s where you have the greatest risk and the vehicle needs to be able to see, and plan, the best,” Olson explains.
The wheel sways ghoulishly behind him.
“Got it,” I reply.
The minivan moves steadily along the road ― autonomous cars don’t speed. Olson explains how the cameras beneath the rearview mirror capture multiple angles of the traffic lights: The vehicle is aware the traffic lights at the intersection are synchronized, so if vision of one is obscured, the car can deduce if one is green, the other will also be green.
I’m not listening at all.
“I’m like, freaking out,” I confess and everyone turns to stare at me. “I thought I would be cooler about this, but I’m not.”
I hadn’t ridden in an autonomous vehicle in years and the first experience hadn’t been positive. A tree branch broke off and landed in the path of an autonomous shuttle on a controlled track and stopped the vehicle in its tracks the first time. All of the passengers — members of the media including myself — were thrust forward from the suddenness of the stop. I thought, “Well, this clearly doesn’t belong on a real road if it can’t manage a branch.”
Eight years later, I’m sitting in the farthest seat possible from the steering wheel of a vehicle that’s driving itself, surrounded by moving cars operated by unsuspecting humans.
At one point, the vehicle rests in the center lane close to an intersection, about to turn left. A vehicle approaches from a distance and I stop breathing entirely. What if the self-driving car can’t see it in time? What if it tries to pass us, and the May Mobility minivan moves to turn at the exact same moment, and we collide?
Renwick asks if I’m OK in a voice so soft my recorder doesn’t pick it up. He’s concerned only for my well-being — he knows the car is fine, and it executes the left turn flawlessly — but his expression is enough to make me laugh and shake off the nerves for a few moments.
We continue with the interview and the vehicle delivers us safely and without incident to the coffee shop Olson selected in the app he used to summon the May Mobility vehicle.
