While I was in Dubai for the ERTICO ITS World Congress, I attended a technical visit organised by Cruise. If you have not heard of Cruise, they are an automated taxi provider. They are currently in the testing phase for a new service in Dubai, located in the suburb of Jumeirah, an area near the beach that is popular with tourists but also features large townhouses and detached houses.
Cruise is currently working to localise the vehicle and to familiarise the automated driving system with operating in the area. There are particular differences in the track and road conditions compared to America. Cruise was particularly interested in how their vehicles interact with eBikes and Scooters.
As part of the technical visit, I along with ERTICO’s head of CCAM, Stephane Dreher, got to experience a ride. As Cruise is currently carrying out testing, there is a safety supervisor on board in the driver seat. The supervisor only intervenes in a safety-critical situation and has their hands above the wheel. For our visit, there was also a rep from Cruise in the front passenger seat to answer our questions, so not to distract the safety steward.
Although the service did have a safety steward, the experience was close to how it would operate when in public operation without the steward. Cruise staff hailed the vehicle using their app and showed us how it works. The app was very similar to how you would hail a taxi with a driver today. The vehicle was set up to drive to a restaurant nearby for a stop and then return to our start point.
The vehicle pulled up and we got in. We were sitting in the rear seats. In front of each seat was a screen, which provided both information and the ability to control the vehicle: we had to press the display to start the vehicle. The vehicle would not start if the door was open or if the seatbelts were not in. This was interesting to inform our recommendations for future demonstrators in SINFONICA’s WP5 dedicated to the analysis of guidelines and recommendations on for inclusive CCAM deployment.
The journey itself was impressive, with the vehicle negotiating cars reversing out of spaces, pedestrians and cyclists. The vehicle was running slower than it would in public operation to ensure safety testing, which meant that it was perhaps a little more conservative than it would have been in real operations. Although for me, I liked this approach as I can find human taxi drivers quite aggressive.
There was one situation that received remote intervention: as the Cruise vehicle was arriving at the immediate restaurant stop, it did an abrupt turn and stop. What was interesting was that the safety steward didn’t get involved, but remote support connected with the vehicle to adjust the path and the vehicle resumed the journey again.
In summary, for me, it was certainly a smooth experience, probably the smoothest automated vehicle I have ridden in, although I have not ridden in a Waymo, which would be the most comparable to Cruise.
Note: we were asked to not take photos inside the vehicle as was in testing.
Author: John Paddington (ERTICO)