Optimus Ride has already deployed its autonomous transportation systems in the Seaport area of Boston, in a mixed-use development in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, and in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a 300-acre industrial park. Some of the biggest companies in the world are spending billions in the race to develop self-driving vehicles that can go anywhere. Meanwhile, Optimus Ride, a startup out of MIT, is already helping people get around by taking a different approach. The company's autonomous vehicles only drive in areas it comprehensively maps, or geofences. Self-driving vehicles can safely move through these areas at about 25 miles per hour with today's technology.

Self-driving vehicle company, Optimus Ride, has launched a fleet of autonomous shuttles in New York City's Brooklyn Navy Yard for what will be the city's biggest test of self-driving tech to date. According to the company, the six self-driving cars will serve passengers only on the Navy Yards' private roads as well through a loop shuttle service connecting NYC Ferry passengers from dock 72 to a gate next to Flushing Avenue. Vehicles will operated from 7 pm until 10 pm and be chaperoned by two safety attendants -- one in the drivers seat to intervene if necessary and another in the passenger seat logging the vehicles' performance. For now, the rides will be free according to The Verge, as Optimus has received $18 million in its first round of funding and is in contract with the Navy Yard for an undisclosed sum. Optimus says its expecting to service 500 passengers per day and cater to the roughly 10,000 workers that are based there.

New York's first-ever commercial driverless cars got off to a slow start in the Big Apple. Boston-based tech company Optimus Ride's fleet of six autonomous vehicles officially opened to the public Wednesday, transporting passengers along a one-mile loop around the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But the demand for the free robo-shuttle service between the NYC Ferry stop at Dock 72 and Cumberland Gate at Flushing Avenue proved sparse during Wednesday's morning rush. Wednesday, The Post observed roughly 15 people hitch a ride in the driverless vehicles, which can hold six passengers, over the hour. One user, 46-year-old Carey Booth who commutes by ferry from her home in Astoria to her job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard every day, took a ride in the shuttle while on her way to work.