There is a city in Southeast Asia where riding a driverless bus is as normal as riding the subway. In Singapore, the Smart transportation are not a futuristic experiment but a concrete solution to very current problems: the shortage of drivers and the need to optimize spaces in one of the most densely populated urban areas on the planet. Here the streets are already traversed by autonomous minibuses, robot street cleaners and delivery vehicles that move without the need for human supervision. An advanced mobility ecosystem that is attracting attention from around the world and that could soon be replicated in other metropolises.
A Journey into the Future of Intelligent Transportation
Do you remember KITT, the talking car from Knight Rider? Well, in Singapore they are doing better. I was very impressed, for example, by the story of Sharon Ong and her son. Like all children, the little one is fascinated by means of transport. During a recent visit to the resort island of Sentosa, mother and son tried everything from the monorail, the traditional bus and the beach tram. But the highlight was the ride on the Robobus, the first autonomous vehicle accessible to the public.
This self-driving minibus, launched last June from the Chinese company WeRide, It covers a 1,2 kilometre route with four stops in approximately 12 minutes. And no, it's not like HAL 9000: there's always a safety driver on board who monitors feeds from radar, lidar and multiple cameras on four control screens. “It was very comfortable,” he said. Ong. “And I felt safe.”
Singapore's Silent Revolution
When we talk about autonomous vehicles, our thoughts immediately turn to the United States and China, where giants like Google with Waymo, Tesla (soon, with his robovans), General Motors, Baidu e Pony AI have invested billions. But away from the spotlight, Singapore is quietly revolutionizing the smart transportation industry with a pragmatic approach that is more reminiscent of my beloved Star Trek is Blade Runner.
Since 2015, when the first road tests began, progress has been steady and this year marked a turning point. Authorities have given the green light to autonomous street cleaning robots and to driverless vehicles for the transport of goods FairPrice, the largest supermarket chain in the country.
THEChangi Airport has started a two-year trial to test autonomous buses for worker transportation. In the bird park, an autonomous off-road vehicle delivers feed to the birds. And this is only the beginning.
“Technology has improved and evolved enormously,” he explains. Sebastian Yee, director of business development of WeRide. “People are more open to autonomous vehicles now and the implementation costs are also lower. I think this is the right time and place.”
But why Singapore?
The answer is simple: necessity. The small “city-state” has a chronic problem of shortage of manpower, especially bus drivers. With a population of almost 6 million in a space the size of the island of Elba, innovative solutions are needed. As explained Niels de Boer, senior program director at Center of Excellence for Testing and Research of Autonomous Vehicles (CETRAN), foreign drivers help fill the gap, but “they are not a long-term solution”. Autonomous vehicles could also be the answer to traffic and to the proliferation of parking lots that steal space from the city.
It is no coincidence that Singapore has earned first place among 30 countries in theAutonomous Vehicle Readiness Index drawn up by the consultancy firm KPMG. The city-state has surpassed the United States and China in the categories of politics, legislation and consumer acceptance. It is as if they have created a “Formula 1” of intelligent transportation, where every innovation is tested in maximum safety conditions.
Smart transportation, the competitive advantage
Unlike the US and China, where regulations change like the weather in spring, Singapore has clear and uniform guidelines. This attracts foreign companies like honey to bees. As a spokesperson for WeRide, “the exceptionally high safety requirements make the license very prestigious.” Terry Zhou, CEO of the Chinese company ZelosTech, added an interesting detail: “Singapore has an excellent reputation: once it has obtained the public access license, it is also recognized by other customers abroad, for example in the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong”.
There is also room for national pride. Moovita, the only Singaporean company to produce autonomous vehicles (which in its homeland transports students for free) has reached as far as China. In October, it launched five self-driving buses in the eco-friendly city of Tianjin, becoming the first foreign supplier of autonomous vehicles to get a license in the land of the dragon.
Come said il Minister of Transport Chee Hong Tat, the goal is to implement more autonomous logistics vehicles and self-driving minibuses on “simpler routes with less traffic and ridership.”
“We want to move faster,” he admitted, “however, it is important to do so safely in our dense urban environment, and to make sure that the different elements of our ecosystem are ready.”
The road to tomorrow
I like to think that one day we will tell our grandchildren about when smart transportation wasn't so smart. When buses needed a driver, just like we talk about today. elevators with the elevator operator. In Singapore, that future has already begun. And it is not science fiction: it is everyday reality, pragmatic, efficient. Just the way they like it.
In a few years we will no longer be surprised to see a driverless bus, just as today we are no longer surprised by a drone delivering packages or a robot that cleans the house. The future always comes, one step at a time. In Singapore they just decided to take those steps a little earlier than others.
