Singapore is fast approaching the era of self-driving taxis, says one expert…

SANTA CLARA, USA — Singapore could be the first country in the world to get a widespread transport service made up entirely of self-driving cars.

That’s the view of Glen De Vos, the chief technology officer of Delphi Corporation, a major automotive supplier that is working to launch just such a robot taxi business here.

Delphi already has one self-driving car on the road here, and will introduce two more this month to gather more data as it prepares to operate an on-demand taxi service minus taxi drivers.

The company has been working with the Land Transport Authority since August last year on an autonomous taxi trial. The project is designed to figure out what is needed on the infrastructure side — in terms of the road network, data centres and so on — to make robot cabs viable here.

If all goes to plan, by 2020 you should be able to summon a driverless car with your smartphone to take you wherever you want.

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“We’re not doing it as a science experiment. We want to work with the LTA to actually launch a commercial service,” says De Vos (above). “I would put Singapore at the very top of the list of cities that could deploy this quickly.”

Delphi’s self-driving Audis have 26 cameras and sensors that scan the world around them constantly, but what really makes them run isn’t electronic eyes.

It’s brains.

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If Intel has its way, those brains will come from its factories. The chip-making giant’s microprocessors already power practically everything with a keyboard, and it’s scrambling to have a presence that’s as ubiquitous on the road as it is in the office.

In common with more than 100 autonomous prototypes around the world, Delphi’s Audi is controlled by Intel chips.

The Santa Clara-based company is building a kit that carmakers can eventually plug into their products, potentially saving the motor industry from the effort of developing it themselves. Not to mention the R&D cost; why devote billions to creating something when you can buy an off-the-shelf solution and tailor it to your needs?

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