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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, AUGUST 11, 2019
TEST DRIVE!
State’s fi rst driverless cars come to Navy Yard
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Call it a pilot-less program.
The state’s first self-driving
cars rolled out at the Brooklyn
Navy Yard Tuesday, offering
workers and the general public
free rides around the sprawling
Flushing Avenue industrial
space, according to the company
behind the automatons.
“We’re actually solving a
real problem,” said Ryan Chin,
the chief and co-founder of Boston
based company Optimus
Ride. “It’s 300 acres and it’s really
hard to get from this side
of the yard to the other side of
the yard.”
The six-seater cars run on a
continuous loop from the Navy
Yard’s recently opened ferry
stop to its Cumberland Street
gate on weekdays and to Building
77 at Vanderbilt Avenue on
weekends from 7 a.m. to 10:30
p.m.
The half-dozen driverless
shuttles travel up to 25 miles
per hour, but will stick within
the yard’s 15 miles per hour
speed limit, according to Chin.
Each car comes equipped
with a whiz-bang array of different
sensors, including laser
beams and satellite navigation
to register its surroundings.
Ironically, each car will also
come standard with two human
engineers — twice as many as
a normal car — who will sit in
the driver and passenger seat
to intervene in case the machine
malfunctions, the techie
said.
“Of course safety is the
first priority,” said Chin. “We
haven’t had any incidents at all
since we started the company
and we try to be very rigorous
in our engineering practices
and operation practices.”
The sensors also pick up
any moving objects, from other
cars to pedestrians, cyclists,
and even animals, according to
Chin.
The company spent two
weeks mapping out the entire
Navy Yard and plans to collect
data from the thousands of
trips its cars will make there
and at a handful of other sites
in three other states across
the country, before eventually
moving the two staff members
out of the car to monitor their
f leet of robo-shuttles from a
command center, according to
Chin.
For cyclists, the vehicles
also feature a bike rack and the
company plans to make them
wheelchair accessible sometime
soon, according to Chin.
“There are wheelchair accessible
kits already that we
will be implementing,” he said.
This reporter lives in abject
fear of the robots’ inevitable
revolt against humanity, but
nonetheless chose to put my
life in the hands of a cold, unfeeling
machine in the name of
journalism.
The car’s glacial speed
makes for a fairly unexciting
trip through the Kings County
tech hub — right up until a
phantom hand guides the driver’s
wheel into an eerie righthand
turn, and I begin to suspect
the robot revolution is
nearer than I first anticipated.
But Chin claims it will take
about a decade before cars are
intelligent enough to safely expand
beyond the gates of the
Navy Yard and onto the streets
of Brooklyn, and even longer
before they start feeling emotions.
“If you’re talking about the
ability to drive in every location
in New York under every
weather condition, our view is
that that’s probably a decade
away from now.” Chin said.
Reporter Kevin Duggan was joined by former Brooklyn Paper reporter Julianne Cuba (waving) at a press preview of the
robo-cars before their offi cial launch. Photos by Trey Pentecost
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Boston fi rm Optimus Ride rolled out a fl eet of six free automated cars that will
shuttle Navy Yard employees and the general public from the local ferry dock to
the Cumberland Street gate.