In an office park on the outskirts of the city of Atlanta, the sidewalks have been filled with electric scooters . It is not strange, because together with San Francisco and New York, it is one of the American cities where more vehicles of this type have been deployed on the streets in recent years. In them, four companies share a fleet of tens of thousands of scooters that can be rented from a mobile app and that are especially useful, given the limited public transport in North American cities. The quarantine caused by COVID-19 forced these firms to halt their activity, but little by little these vehicles are once again crowding urban centers.
Atlanta scooters have a characteristic that differentiates them from those of companies such as Uber, Bird or Lyft, although their appearance is almost identical: they are ‘semi-autonomous’. They are handled like any other, but instead of the user having to go out to find a free one, the ingenuity travels to wherever the client requesting it in an app is. Once the ride is over, the scooter also automatically heads to a warehouse or recharging center if needed, or to the next user, if they still have enough power for another ride.
However, the word ‘semi-autonomous’ must be put in quotes. The scooters of the Atlanta business park do not move using advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and sophisticated ldar sensors (a system for measuring and detecting objects using laser) capable of seeing the surroundings in detail, as do autonomous cars that already circulate in some American streets. The solution that the company that operates them, GoX, has come up with, is simpler: thousands of kilometers away, in Mexico, a team of operators leads them through the streets of the complex to their destinations.
All GoX vehicles are equipped with a camera, additional wheels for added stability, and a mobile link that enables remote control. Their goal is to do away with some of the common problems of other car-sharing services. As scooters go directly to the user who requests them, for example, it is not necessary to have many scattered around the sidewalks waiting for potential customers. There are also fewer opportunities for unusable vandalism, and there is no need for a maintenance team to pick up units that are running low on batteries.
Although it seems excessively complex for such a trivial use, the founders of GoX believe that this system will end up being essential if we want to avoid that the streets are crowded with scooters and electric bicycles. But could they have also found the key to the future of urban mobility?
We have been hearing about autonomous cars for years and how they will change our existence, and it is true that there are already pilot programs for their operation, but we are still far from seeing them circulate. The technology for them to do so already exists – as long as the ideal conditions exist – and the limits are rather regulatory, but it is already known that the perfect environment does not exist. When something fails – and at some point it will – a human has to be ready to take control.
For this reason, the usefulness of remote operators, remote drivers such as those who control GoX scooters, who will be able to solve some problems for which an autonomous car is not prepared has begun to be considered: a road with works that force change the usual traffic rules, drive with the utmost care through unmarked sections … Passengers would receive the vehicle’s alert signal and, immediately afterwards, a message from the company in charge explaining that a person has taken control until conditions are once again favorable for the car to circulate alone.
It could be done almost from anywhere on the planet. The implementation of 5G mobile phone networks, with lower latency, will allow a turn of the steering wheel or a pressure on the brake pedal of the remote controller to be replicated in a vehicle a few tenths of a second later, and the signal they pick up the cameras of the cars are transmitted almost in real time and with the highest resolution to the operator. Already in 2017, Telefónica and Ericsson demonstrated the viability of an autonomous driving system over 5G networks. A pilot toured the Applus Idiada racing circuit in Tarragona from a cockpit located 70 kilometers away, in Barcelona: as a reference, he used 4K resolution videos emitted by the car he was driving.
This type of remote control system would be useful in very different settings. For example, several Silicon Valley start-ups are creating fully autonomous delivery vehicles capable of bringing food or groceries home, and some are already operating on a small scale. Navigating urban environments presents many problems that would be difficult to solve for a fully autonomous system , but not for a human operator, however remote. The maritime transport of goods could also benefit: it now means having ships with a large crew that must spend many days at sea to carry cargo from one port to another. Technicians at Rolls-Royce – which in addition to the famous luxury cars manufactures propulsion systems for airplanes and ships – believe that this decade we will see the first remotely manned cargo ships. One or two captains will direct the ship from a dry dock office.
As with autonomous cars, to reach this situation will require a major regulatory change – international maritime law does not allow a boat without a crew – but the technical elements necessary to do so already exist and the savings in operating costs is so great that It is an opportunity that no shipping company will miss.
Remote control systems could die of success : As autonomous driving gains in efficiency – largely thanks to what is learned from repeated remote driving sessions – they will become less and less necessary. There will come a time when having a human in charge of a vehicle will seem risky and arbitrary, but, until then, these kinds of intermediate solutions could give us the security we need to dare to let go of the wheel.
