Trams will go into the future – Kommersant FM
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Unmanned trams will appear in the capital. They could begin testing this year. The experiment will last until 2026, said Deputy Mayor of the capital for transport issues Maxim Liksutov. He noted that domestic specialists will be involved in autonomous driving technology, software and system integration.
According to the deputy mayor, at first a driver will be on duty in such trains, but the ultimate goal of the project is the complete automation of this type of transport in the capital. The tram will monitor everything that happens on the road network and predict the behavior of both passengers and drivers. Liksutov added that these tasks can be completed in 2024-2025.
Such deadlines are too optimistic, says Petr Shkumatov, coordinator of the Blue Buckets movement: “Unmanned technologies are in the testing stage. Maybe, of course, some kind of breakthrough will be made within two years, but I honestly don’t really believe in it. So far, I see that autonomous driving technologies have indeed reached a fairly serious level of development, sufficient for them to be used on a limited scale. Economically this is a very expensive project. It is much cheaper to pay drivers salaries.
In general, automation is a trend of technological progress, it is happening all over the world. People get used to it quite quickly; this process takes 3-6 months. After which people begin to willingly and without any fear use, for example, cars without a driver. Many people say that the robot drives the car better than the average driver.”
Other types of unmanned vehicles are already being tested in Russia. For example, KamAZ and SberAutoTech trucks plying along the M-11 highway transported more than 12 thousand tons of cargo. TASS reported this. And in June 2023, Yandex launched an unmanned taxi in the southwest of Moscow. For now it is operating in test mode in the Yasenevo area, every day from 07:00 to 01:00. In the cars there is a test driver who monitors the safety of the trip; according to Russian legislation, this is a necessary condition.
Investments in the unmanned tram project will pay off, but in the long term, notes expert in the field of artificial intelligence Igor Shcherbakov:
“The key risks in this project lie in the legal plane, because it is not yet entirely clear who should be held responsible in the event of any incidents with this tram.
It is clear that it is not a car. The developer, the person who reviewed it, or someone else. In the case of equipment that travels on rails, AI needs to make much fewer decisions than, for example, in the same unmanned taxi. Therefore, it seems that in two years it is quite possible to switch to driverless trams.
The closest analogy is the automation of warehouses of large online stores. There, too, the question of what is more profitable is constantly being resolved: hiring cheap storekeepers or investing in technology development. It seems to me that the development of new technologies is more promising.”
At the end of December 2023, the first unmanned sea ferry “General Chernyakhovsky” was launched in Russia. This was reported by the RIA Novosti agency. According to a statement by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, the launch was not a test. Now the ferry will begin delivering socially significant cargo to the Kaliningrad region.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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