Earlier this year, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced two new agreements with separate companies (nuTonomy and Dephi) to test autonomous mobility on-demand services. In other words, Uber, but driverless.

According to LTA, driverless on-demand services are awesome because.

Commuters will be able to summon autonomous shuttles or pods using their smartphones, and the shuttles or pods will bring them in air-conditioned comfort from point to point, for example, from their doorsteps to the train stations. This provides a more comfortable option for first-and-last-mile connectivity. It will also bring greater mobility to the elderly and other commuters who may have difficulties in taking present-day public transport such as buses.

That dream is one step closer to reality. The first batch of nuTonomy driverless cars have started testing operations with members of the public today (August 25, 2016) at One North. The rollout is limited to registered users who received invitations from nuTonomy to help test out the feature.

nuTonomy driverless cars plying the streets at One North. Photo from Instagram user @coromer

For now, the cars are not completely driverless. Each vehicle has one back-up driver in front as well as a researcher at the back who monitors the systems. Each vehicle is also equipped with laser detection systems and cameras.

If trials go well, nuTonomy aims to extend the service to more people in the near future. Their goal is to have a complete self-driving fleet plying our roads by 2018.

H/T AP via Bloomberg

Top photo from nuTonomy Facebook page.

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