NuTonomy starts trials in Singapore of self-driving taxi service

NuTonomy is offering rides in its self-driving taxis to select residents of Singapore from Thursday, ahead of a commercial launch of the service in 2018. The trials on the smartphone app-based service follows an agreement earlier this month between NuTonomy, a startup set up by two former MIT experts in the areas of robotics and intelligent vehicle technology, and Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) to begin trials of an autonomous mobility-on-demand transportation service. The NuTonomy trial comes ahead of similar tests planned by Uber Technologies later this month on the streets of Pittsburgh in the U.S. NuTonomy said its new "robo-taxi" service, which will include specially configured Renault Zoe or Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric vehicles, will run on an on-going basis within Singapore's one-north business district, where the company has been conducting daily autonomous vehicle testing since April. You can see a video of the trial here. The vehicles will be fully autonomous but an engineer from the company will ride in the vehicle both to monitor its performance and to also take over control if required at some point for safety or other reasons.