Travel Tips

I’ve Seen the Future, and It’s Robotaxi

I’m notoriously late to the party.  Rarely am I in the moment, but instead always just a little bit behind the moment.  Sometimes even way behind.

For example, in 1989, 25 years into their career, I discovered this little up-and-coming rock and roll band called the Rolling Stones.  In 2016, I started watching this awesome TV show called “Mad Men”…during its 7^th and final season.  Last year, it was “Yellowstone”.  And now, I’m about to start watching this other show I’ve heard good things about…”The Sopranos”.  I’m really looking forward to it!  I was late to the cell phone, late to texting, late to the personal computer, and late to digital photography.

I was late to the idea of paperless airline tickets, and I was hesitant to send people money through Venmo.

I’m not necessarily afraid of technology, I just like new things to shake out a bit before I jump in.  Historians say you’re supposed to wait about 20 years before properly evaluating the effectiveness of a US President…and that seems about right to me.

But recently, on a trip to Phoenix, AZ for the International Franchise Association Convention, in which my company, Playback Now, was providing video recording services, I found myself with a chance to be ahead of the curve.  Finally I could be on the frontline of technology…a pioneer on the leading edge of something new.  To earn this privilege, all I had to do was hop in the back seat of a car.  The only catch: the car was missing a driver.  That’s right…driverless vehicles are officially a thing now, in very select American cities…Phoenix, San Francisco, and Austin.  I believe it’s technically referred to as a “robotaxi service”.

 

 

Like a Disney Ride in the Real World

For the past few years on trips to Phoenix I had been noticing strange looking white vehicles with tinted windows and large circular spinning devices on their rooftops.  Peering inside, I also noticed no humans inside these quiet moving vehicles.  I wasn’t sure they were even real.  I thought maybe they were just holograms.  It felt like I was a pedestrian in someone’s imaginary Sim City.  I began to question if the people walking on the streets were even real, including myself.  It was a brief existential crisis for me…not gonna lie.

But now, a few years into the testing phase, apparently the company that owns these fully electric vehicles (100% powered by renewable energy), Waymo (a Google subsidiary), was ready for real humans to hop in and ride them.  And the guy who is normally reluctant to trying anything new, namely me, decided to jump in and try it out.  Now granted, my test rides were pretty simple…a 2 mile ride to a restaurant in town, and a 10 mile ride to the airport.  After  booking the rides on the Waymo app, I headed to the location the app told me the vehicle would pick me up.  It showed up on time, and the circular device on top flashed my initials to confirm it was my ride.  I used the app to unlock the doors and I hopped in.  The gender-free, politically-unaffiliated ghost driver greeted me by name (technically in a woman’s voice) and instantly reminded me to wear my seat belt.  In fact, she kind of insisted, with a persistent chime that wouldn’t cease until I buckled in.  She clearly cared.  She then offered up some music playlists for me to choose from on the drive. Of course, I chose Rolling Stones, “Time Is On My Side”.  I quickly noticed we were driving in a Jaguar, which for whatever reason put me much more at ease.  Surely they wouldn’t be taking big risks with a fleet of Jaguars, would they?  The ride was instantly smooth, and clean, and quiet.  My ghost driver seemed to be giving it their full attention.  Not once did I see them glance at a cell phone.  We stopped completely at stop signs.  When red lights turned green, we accelerated nicely to the speed limit with no hesitation and no distraction.  Changing lanes in traffic?  No problem.  My initial reaction to all of this: it felt like a Disney ride in the real world.  Tomorrowland.  I was able to watch the monitor which was feeding my ghost driver all the information it needed, including the whereabouts of all cars, people and objects around us, even recognizing roadside curbs and occasional cones in the road…all of it was visible on the monitor.  My ghost driver saw everything in 360, better than any human driver with a neck could possibly see.  It even pulled off a successful right on red, accurately assessing the situation and gauging the speed of oncoming cars before pulling out and accelerating smoothly.  As we approached the restaurant, my ghost driver completed a legal u-turn and pulled right into the busy and crowded restaurant parking lot, dropping me off right at the door.  I wasn’t expecting that level of service at all…I figured a simple street drop-off would have sufficed.  When I got out of the car, I was treated like a celebrity.  People came up to me incredulously asking how the ride was.  For a moment I felt like one of the Wright brothers, or Shackleton, or Alan Shepard, or Marty McFly.  I had gone where few men had gone before.  Yes, technically it was just The Old Spaghetti Factory on Central Ave. in Phoenix, AZ…but it may as well have been the first sub-orbital space ride in the eyes of the random strangers who saw me step out of the capsule…er, I mean car.

In the end, I felt safer on these robotaxi rides than I’ve ever felt in an Uber or cab.  That probably sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not.  The biggest factors?  My ghost driver had eyes everywhere and wasn’t preoccupied with the worries of the day.  It was simply moving me from Point A to Point B with perfect driving and zero drama.  In all honesty, my only worries were all the other cars and pedestrians on the road potentially messing things up for my little robotaxi.  No AI programming in the world can account for all possible human interactions.

So where does it go from here?  Moving people from place to place using fully electric driverless vehicles certainly seems to have a lot of potential, but are there other purposes driverless vehicles could serve?  Could I envision driverless patrol cars…Robocops…keeping our city streets safe?  I sure wouldn’t bet against it.  Just like I wouldn’t bet against the Rolling Stones.  I think they may be here to stay.

 

Todd Galucki

Senior Program Coordinator

Playback Now