Skip to main content

nuTonomy to test self-driving cars on public roads in Boston

US self-driving car startup nuTonomy is to begin testing its growing fleet of self-driving cars on specific public streets in a designated area of Boston. The company, which launched a self-driving car trial in Singapore in September, has been given permission to operate its vehicles in the city’s Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park. nuTonomy equips its vehicles with a software system which has been integrated with high-performance sensing and computing components, to enable safe operation without a driver.
November 22, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
US self-driving car startup nuTonomy is to begin testing its growing fleet of self-driving cars on specific public streets in a designated area of Boston. The company, which launched a self-driving car trial in Singapore in September, has been given permission to operate its vehicles in the city’s Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park.

nuTonomy equips its vehicles with a software system which has been integrated with high-performance sensing and computing components, to enable safe operation without a driver.

The company’s technology system out of research conducted in Massachusetts Institute of Technology labs run by nuTonomy co-founders Karl Iagnemma and Emilio Frazzoli.

During the Boston road tests, nuTonomy’s software system will learn local signage and road markings while gaining a deeper understanding of pedestrian, cyclist, and driver behaviour and interaction across a complex urban driving environment. nuTonomy plans to work with government officials to expand the testing area to other parts of the city in the near future.

The testing in Boston will enable nuTonomy to build on the knowledge it has gained from the public road tests and public trials it has been conducting in Singapore, where it plans to launch its self-driving mobility-on-demand service in 2018.

Related Content

  • December 14, 2012
    Car to car communications a step closer
    Vehicle manufacturers have targeted 2015 for the first cars to roll off European assembly lines fitted with operational V2X technology. They and their partners in the Car 2 Car Communications Consortium are confident of meeting the target, reports Jon Masters. Around three years from now vehicles should be appearing in showrooms boasting the capability of communicating with each other. Manufacturers will have started fitting the first proprietary car-to-car driver-aid safety devices and deployment of ‘vehic
  • December 4, 2014
    Global navigation reference point to test zero emission driverless vehicles
    A successful consortium led by the UK’s Transport research Laboratory (TRL) has been selected by Innovate UK to deliver the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), one of three projects awarded to test driverless vehicles in UK urban locations. The US$12.5 million project will see three trials of different types of zero emission automated vehicles within an innovative, technology-agnostic testing environment set in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The ‘prime meridian’ was establi
  • January 31, 2025
    Boston transit signal upgrade for Control Technologies
    Move is part of Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Better Bus project
  • April 2, 2014
    Big data and GPS combine to cut emergency response times
    David Crawford looks at technologies for better emergency medical service delivery. Emergency medical services (EMS) play key roles in transporting, or bringing treatment to, patients who become ill through medical emergencies or are injured in road traffic accidents (RTAs). But awareness has been rising steadily, in the US and elsewhere, of the extent to which EMS can generate their own emergencies. The most common cause is vehicles causing or becoming involved in RTAs, as a result of driving fast under pr