AI

Peachtree Corners rolls out May Mobility autonomous on-demand

Peachtree Corners has become a Georgia smart city innovation hotbed in recent years, and will be offering an autonomous vehicle operating to hotels and restaurants and other stops for the public beginning the week of October 7.

It is the first AV deployment by May Mobility in the entire state and will rely on a flashy pink and green Toyota Sienna, able to fit four passengers comfortably, or even disabled passengers with a wheelchair. The system will be on-demand, with eight stops, allowing a user to check availability from a smartphone.  As with everything in its tech environment, the city of 45,000 residents and 45,000 workers in suburban Atlanta hopes to expand the service, which relies on T-Mobile 5G connectivity, giving the city visibility into the AV service at its operations center with C-V2X technology.

At first, the service will be offered with a safety driver, with a single vehicle, but more vehicles are in the plans and without a safety driver starting in the winter.  The city hopes to expand the route to its town center as well.

May Mobility is operating in 15 cities in the US and Japan with one location fully autonomous in Sun City, Arizona, said Daisy Wall, government sector commercial leader for May. The company has been operating since 2017 and has accumulated $300 million in private investment with 280 workers.

The Toyota Sienna is fitted with Multi-Policy Decision Making, a system that is powered by in-situ AI, meaning it can run on-board simulations in real-time while driving autonomously. The system analyzes inputs from 18 sensors around the vehicle including from five lidars, 5 radars and 8 cameras. The Sienna operates under what engineers have labeled Level 4 autonomy, a high level.

May Mobility says it is the only AV company to generate live training data to track edge case problems, meaning it can enter a city at a fraction of the time and cost to set up service, and without a safety operator. Data from the sensors is fed to the MPDM every 200 milliseconds, allowing the system to envision thousands of potential scenarios every second. It does so without having to rely on offline learning models. It learns in real-time while driving, meaning it can handle maneuvers not considered by engineers in advance, the company said.

Peachtree Corners has innovated around pedestrian safety along major corridors already in coordination with its Curiosity Lab, an innovation center and tech incubator.  “The big benefit with May is we don’t need autonomous vehicle lanes,” said Brandon Branham, CTO and assistant city manager.

On demand transit is needed in growing areas, often outside of cities where public transit is not available, Branham and Wall said.  The two met each other a year ago and the service idea was gradually realized.  “We’re really excited to bring May to Peachtree and move residents around at higher speeds and with more destinations,” Branham said.

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