Dedicated loading bays for Uber and Lyft in Mountain View, California

Dealing with "roadside" has become one of the greater challenges faced by autonomous vehicles and even manually-driven taxis and delivery vehicles. Driving on the road has its challenges, but every trip also needs to pick up goods or passengers, which may be another problem in cities. This is an unresolved issue by the robotic taxi company Cruise, which recently led their San Francisco MTA to oppose their application for a license to provide robotic taxi services there.

When I recently reported on Cruise’s first self-driving taxi, I pointed out that it was strange that even though the rider was waiting in front of a temple with a large and empty loading area, the vehicle never stopped for the shuttle service in front of it. Instead, it blocked the lane and the rider got in and out. I suggest this only because Cruise is "doing one thing at a time" and has not solved all the problems of "Picov Andropov" (the famous Russian driver in NPR "Car Talk") on the first day. Although it is illegal, human taxi service drivers often do this, especially when the streets are not crowded, just because it is easier to do so.

SF Muni seemed unwilling to let them solve it later. This is not unreasonable, but they should also be handed over-if Cruise is not doing PuDo (Pickup/Drop-Off) on the street, then Uber, Lyft and taxis should also be cracked down to do so. We hope that all vendors, including Cruise, are safe, but we don’t want to slow down the pace of independent developers than other vendors.

In some places, the roadside is often empty, which is an easy problem to solve. If there is an area that is easy to load or a wide curb, it is not too difficult for a general algorithm to recognize and use it. However, to really do it well, you may need to map every PuDo location in the city, including official loading areas, parking spaces, and other approved areas. Similarly, you need to determine the no parking/no standing areas, bus stops and other places that are not allowed, and their business hours. You also want to learn about the official PuDo area (some cities have) and even the dedicated lanes commonly found in hotels and office buildings. These areas may have additional rules on how to use them.

When you have such a map and arrive at a certain location, it is not difficult to determine which of the mapped PuDo areas near the destination can be used for free. In the case of parking spaces, this may even involve parallel parking. Robots will do very well in this regard, although there is a view that parking in a lane and getting passengers off is usually faster than parallel parking and reversing, and less disruptive to traffic.

When getting on the bus, waiting passengers can see a map of attractions in their area and click on a free one. If there is only one, they might even "declare" the location by partially standing in it and waving a car trying to park there-but they shouldn't wave other cars that want to quickly PuDo. Otherwise, if someone is taken away, they should update the app. They should also consider walking a little bit until they find a free place.

Some of the best stops are right in front of the residential driveway. If it becomes a regular activity, it is a bit annoying for the homeowner-see below for more details. Another interesting and frequent opening is in front of the fire hydrant. In some cities, it is legal to stand at the fire hydrant, but the law requires drivers to stay in the car when standing in the fire lane. The law may need to be revised to cover robot drivers, who of course will leave as soon as a fire truck is detected, just like humans.

The situation for delivery drivers is different. They usually have to run into the restaurant or go to the door to carry food. This makes them less likely to block the lane. For delivery, most robotic delivery services today inform customers that the delivery is about to arrive through their phone, and the customer must go out to the side of the road. In this case, if it also makes sense for passengers, then quick turnaround makes sense.

In this scene in the video, the Cruise car has been parked in the middle of the lane and let the company get off... [+] founder Kyle Vogt (Kyle Vogt), although it can use two open curb areas. This angered SF MTA.

The future offers the potential for more magnificent things, namely roadsides that are fully managed by the city that owns it, including parking spaces and PuDo parking spaces. Many people, including the well-respected parking expert Donald Shoup, believe that the idea of ​​free parking is a big mistake, and this idea can even be extended to short-term use of roadside space. Today, all commercial users of roadside spaces are computerized-using applications or soon because they are robots. It is not impossible to have a system that can manage, charge and reserve the use of roadside space, even if it is only 30 seconds.

This can be done without better parking management, although it will definitely help a lot if you do the same. Maybe one day all parking will be done through only one app that can select, book, guide you to parking spaces (street and private) in your city and pay for it. In this case, vehicles that need to do PuDo in busy areas can be reserved for one minute in the parking space and PuDo point so that they can easily arrive. But they can still do this for no parking spaces that allow PuDo. In particular, some cities are allocated as "TNC only" space.

Vehicles that are implementing PuDo (including the manually driven TNC with apps) will estimate their arrival time, which will improve over time. Its headquarters can ask the city to reserve a location for a period of time. This will prevent any other such vehicles from using the location at the scheduled time. If there is only TNC in the place, private drivers will not be allowed to use it, but in other places, they may find it there accidentally and must be dealt with-including handling at the passenger's suggestion. As the vehicle gets closer, the booking time will be refined until it is completely accurate, and of course it will be adjusted to not overlap with other people who are approaching.

If it is large enough, the reservation applies even to the gap in front of the residential driveway. Above, I noticed that frequent use of these will annoy the residents of these houses, so the reservation system can limit the number of PuDos in these places. In addition, residents of these houses who happen to use smart apps or cars to drive can block bookings in front of their lanes for free if they might block residents. Although residents do not own the curb in front of the driveway, we don't want them to be too frustrated. Using these spaces means more PuDo capacity and less street congestion, so this is a win-win situation. (A single lane is usually not enough to accommodate PuDo, but many lanes are paired or matched with some unusable curbs.)

Special efforts are needed to deal with places with a high volume of passengers, such as airports, office buildings during off-hours, and the largest sports venues. Although it would be nice to develop a distributed system to own it, PuDo space in these places is limited, and it is impractical to have all the cars at once. These facilities are likely to sign a contract with someone to run a system to manage their PuDo space. The robotic car company will talk to the server that manages the building to handle the congested time, telling the vehicle when it can book to approach the building and go to their location—perhaps only when their passengers are ready to board the car immediately.

Multinational companies have already experienced this to some extent in certain airports, even though they all have their own areas and sometimes manage them themselves. Taxi PuDo areas, such as in Singapore airport, may be the best design compared to the usually slow-moving taxi lines found in some places. The busiest locations (especially stadiums and convention centers) may well arrange passengers on buses going to the satellite PuDo parking lot in the direction each passenger wants to go. In some cases, these vehicles (whether they are cars, trucks, shuttles, or buses) may even travel a long distance because no one will get in the way.

These systems may be related to or the same as systems handling larger and busy parking lots. If the vehicle is not close to the parking lot or loading area before it is ready for a quick transfer, there should be no congestion in these areas. The old parking lot that is no longer needed in the era of robot taxis is a great choice for parking areas. At the airport, one can imagine using the old short-term parking lot and allocating most of its space to PuDo, which can handle all but the busiest time. Of course, if they build a robot car airport, then this may also happen in the unused part of the airport. The airside vehicle will bring people without checked luggage directly from their plane to the gate of the fence and PuDo area for transfer. Transport to the ground.

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