LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A change in how you drive on the Las Vegas Strip is coming soon.
Zoox, a company creating autonomous vehicles, plans to roll out a fully autonomous taxi, or robotaxi, next year. The company says while the public will not be driven in the robotaxi until next year, they are already testing these new robotaxis on the strip.
Zoox sent Channel 13 this statement saying:
"At first, only Zoox employees will be able to ride in these expanded areas to help refine the experience. Next year, Zoox will welcome its first early public riders in Las Vegas as part of its “Zoox Explorer” program."
Channel 13 took a closer look to see how safe the robotaxi and other autonomous vehicles are and how they will navigate all of our construction in the valley.
"I don’t think there will be any problem or anything," said 15-year Las Vegas resident Henry Suarez.
Suarez said he'd be excited to see the new Zoox robotaxi on the Strip next year. He says he will take a ride in it, but not everyone agrees.
“It makes me really uneasy, I don’t like things I don’t have control over," said Chelsey Radtke, who voiced her concerns about autonomous vehicles.
This new robotaxi has no steering wheel or pedals. The vehicle sits four people carriage-style and is fully driven by artificial intelligence and several sensors.
“Lidar, radar, thermal sensors, cameras," said Zoox Director of Fleet Operations in Las Vegas Justin Richard Windus.
Zoox was founded in 2014 in Northern California. The company opened a factory in 2019 and has been testing out its sensors and training the AI on our streets since 2019.
The company uses white SUVs with the same cameras and sensors on them as the robotaxi.
These retrofitted white Highlanders have drivers inside at all times but operate autonomously. The drivers are in place to correct the vehicle whenever it runs into something it has not seen or something temporary like a new construction project.
The driver corrects the vehicle, then the AI system maps out that scenario to learn in case it runs into a similar scenario down the line.
“That’s why it’s so important that we have our retrofitted Highlanders out on the street because we have to build that safety case and we have the retrofitted Highlanders out there in order to gain those miles," Windus said.
Since the system is the same on the SUVs as the robotaxi, plus the frame of the vehicle is similar, Zoox then can transfer all of the data to the robotaxi to know how to drive our roads.
Teaching the vehicle what to do in all scenarios and understanding what is temporary and what is permanent is the tricky part.
“I anticipate it’s a large problem for the operators of these vehicles and these companies because there are certain things you don’t want to change, you don’t want the boundaries of the road to change," said Chuck Tessler, UNLV Assistant Professor of Computer Science.
Tessler teaches an autonomous racing course with small vehicles the size of RC cars at UNLV. He tells me that safety is critical.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there have been 617 autonomous driving car crashes since July 2021.
“Autonomous vehicles, while they’ll likely be safer than our drivers, they’ll still have a certain amount of risk, and we as a society need to find out what that balance of risk should be," Tessler said.
Zoox says they have not had an issue with crashes or vehicles stalling and have a focus on safety.
Zoox is not the only company introducing fully autonomous vehicles across the country and here in our valley. Vay, Halo.Car, Tesla and more all operate in Las Vegas.
Zoox does not have the option to remote control their vehicle if a crash or stall happens, but officials say they have a 24-hour center in the southwest valley operating to help if anything happens.
There is a camera inside the vehicle they can access if necessary, an emergency button customers and first responders can speak through with Zoox staff, plus a touch screen option to notify of an emergency to make the vehicle stop.
The robotaxi is equipped to drive up to 45 miles per hour on surface streets and up to 75 miles per hour on the freeway.
Zoox says as of now, it plans to first operate the robotaxi on the Strip but plans to eventually operate outside of the strip across our valley in the future.
Zoox is partnered with the Vegas Golden Knights and plans to commute fans to the games immediately after releasing the robotaxi.
